"Authenticating to Tor" stage permanently
I looked up this issue (yes, I did try) and the remedy you seem to suggest is to check if other versions of Vidalia or Tor are running - I have no other versions running and I do not have the authentication setting turned on in the preferences and yet it just stays on "Authenticating to Tor" no matter what. It will also ask for a password on startup. Now what I do in practice is just cancel this and ignore the "Authenticating to Tor" (as it connects and bootstraps anyway) but it seems shoddy and a bug that the GUI continues to state "Authenticating..."
Trac:
Username: TheDude