I've done some Internet searching and found a likely cause of the crash bug on activating General Stats. It's apparently due to the game storing the Favorite Spell as the record ID of a spell and, when it builds the stats list, retrieving that record's Name field to display the spell's name. When a mod is deactivated, any NEW records it adds no longer exist. If Favorite Spell is the record ID for one of the spells added by a mod, and that mod is deactivated, retrieving the Name field FAILS because that record no longer exists, and the game crashes because Bethesda haven't error-trapped their code properly to ACCOUNT for a "missing record" situation.
Mods that I suspect would cause a General Stats crash if they're later deactivated? ANY mod that adds new spells. The Midas Magic mod in particular adds many new ones, and the Tytanis mod has the Midas Magic mod embedded.
The cure for this should be simple, if tedious. Just keep spam-casting ONE original built-in spell (e.g. Clairvoyance, which works anytime as long as you have a quest marker active) and occasionally Quicksaving to test WHETHER General Stats now works without crashing the game. If it does crash, just re-run, reload and continue spam-casting. When it eventually doesn't crash, it's because the spell you've BEEN casting has BECOME the new Favorite Spell and the game is no longer trying to reference a non-existent record.
By "avoiding it for months", you've been doing the above every time you've cast your "favorite" spell, whether it's built-in or one added by a mod you currently have active. The General Stats crash bug has cured itself over time because Favorite Spell has eventually changed at some point.
For preference, prepare Skyrim for deactivation of a mod that adds new spells by checking Favorite Spell FIRST and, if it's one of the spells the mod adds, spam-cast a built-in spell until Favorite Spell changes TO it. It's then safe to deactivate the mod and General Stats won't cause a crash afterwards.
Bethesda can (and should) easily fix this bug by checking whether Favorite Spell points to a non-existent record ID after any savegame is loaded and, if not, revert it to a default original built-in spell's record ID, e.g. Flames, which every player starts with.
Hope this helps.
