I up-graded to Vers 8.0b (build 217) and have spent the last two weeks trying to fix major crashing problems but the system is still very unstable after three re-installations of XP Pro. Previously on this machine I had Vegas 7 which ran faultlessly.

I feel there could be a problem with Windows registry as after several virus scans with different programs nothing has shown up.
I have a highly regarded registry scanning program called RegCure which has shown many registry errors re-occurring even after the registry has been repaired.

For example, just now I ran several passes of this program until it showed no errors at all after several "cleans".

I then opened up Vegas Pro 8 and started editing, and after about 15 minutes I opened the sound editor - Sound Forge 9 and after a few minutes suddenly there was a BSOD with a page of errors for a split second and the whole thing crashed and shut down. After I rebooted I ran the registry scan program which showed 79 problems, - 15 File/Path References and 64 empty registry keys.

I am completely at my wits end as I have now been wrestling with these crashing problems for two weeks and getting nowhere. I know that Sony Vegas Pro 8 uses .net framework which got corrupted in the previous installation of XP and caused much waste of time. I am running 4 gigs of RAM with a P4 Dual core 2.1 g. - Asus Mbd. - P5N32-SLI SE Deuxe. I have also run the Windows memory check utility which found no problems. Naturally I have installed all the updates & extras associated wth XP Pro. including .Net framework plus 95 updates AFTER SP2 !
Looks like I need to go back to Vegas 7.

Can anyone offer any solutions other than buying a Mac.!

Regards,

Ron.

Buying a MAC does not remove you from the world of crashes!

My advice, bin Vegas 8 and continue to use what worked for you.

My Vegas 8 disk is still in it's box and that's where it'll stay until nightmares such as the one you are experiencing disappear from Vegas forums!

Hope you get it sorted soon!

Stuart, I'll disagree with you here. I've been using Vegas Pro 8 successfully since last summer.

Ron, It definitely sounds like you could have some issues with your system. While it might not be a pleasant thing to do, I'd consider doing a complete rebuild from the OS up. Once you get everything installed, I'd also do a backup of the drive (I use Acronis TrueImage for this but I know there are other programs that do the same) so I could quickly get back to that same point. I would suspect it would work much better after that.

Ron...

I've never had good luck with registry cleaners. In my experience, they do things to the registry that result in exactly the kind of problems you describe. Vegas 8 seems to be causing a lot of problems for some users, so, I'm not saying that V8 isn't the problem. But, i would be highly suspicious of the results of using a registry cleaner. Some cleaners allow you to undo what you did. Have you tried that? Then re-install V8.

I second what the Edward and Bill say. I would reformat hard drive.

I would add, with controversy I'm sure, never install virus protection.

I never mess with the registry using registry cleaners, what is the purpose? If you don't know how to clean your registry manually, I wouldn't advise using a reg cleaner. The way to improve performance is having a workstation running raid hard drives. IMO those kind of software programs are a waste of money.

I know MANY people are succesful with BYO computers, but I gave it up. My last ASUS MOBO was awful. I bought a true workstation class machine and haven't looked back.

I know some of you run virus protection and I respect that. But I have NEVER EVER run it, never waste my money on it. Virus protection slowed down my first custom built computer in back in 1995 and I got rid of it. Use a router and watch where you go. Good luck.

Have one computer for all your video editing and never use the thing other than that.
Have one computer for all your net surfing emails etc...
This should fix the problem.
I have done this and it works.

Edward & Co's advice is sound re the rebuild from OS up.

But Simon nailed it, in my opinion. Dedicated pc for video editing, everything else elsewhere. Ideal world, I know, but it works.

I guess I misread the OP... but I agree, "re-installing" is fruitless with XP, it used to work OK sometimes... up to about Win 98...

XP once it goes unstable, fuggedaboudit... Registry cleaners are not a "fix" despite their claims - I ran one, and have numerous errors in various programs. Things got "lost" in that "cleanup". But hey, I was desperate, and I think it did fix something which was a problem at the time, it just broke a pile of other things in the process... I guess it's a wash...

I'd say if you are 100% certain your hardware is fine (I've had co-incident hardware failure that SEEMED like the OS, when something else had gone intermittent), backup the HD or put the old drive aside and use this as an excuse to upgrade the HDD. Start from scratch, and put on ONLY what you need (I've got a lot of stuff on my machine, so you don't necessarily HAVE to only install OS and Vegas, but it's "safer".

I recommend get the OS in, all the patches, and all the hardware updates, if you're stable there, set system restore points, and repeat as you go - that's the ONLY way to "go back" with XP when the "bit hits the fan".

Start with "mission critical" apps and get those working (Vegas would count<wink>!).

I'd agree leave any "virus scanners" as far away from your machine as possible - if you ever think you have a virus, run a free online scan, the permanently installed ones sap MASSIVE amounts of performance from your machine. Practice safe computing and have a firewall on your Internet, and you shouldn't ever need an anti-virus. I've only ONCE been infected, and that was due to my own stupidity, opening an email because I was curious... DUH!!!! FWIW, everyone else I knew got that virus too... I got really good at cleaning it...

Watch carefully for any programs that add routines to the start up overload and further slag your machine down. Uninstall or turn off as many as you can, but keep in mind some HAVE to run (my Huey color correction for instance).

When you get done, move all your data back into place (IIRC there is a utility to transfer all your settings over, I just do in manually), keep the old drive for a few weeks to make 100% sure you've left no data behind, then wipe it, and use for whatever purpose, or let it hang around until you decide you need the space more than whatever might be left in the wreckage of your old Win-Ders install...

FWIW, I've installed Vegas, and even though my machine is very much overdue for the above procedure (sort of waiting for Phenom errors to be fixed or my stubborn "support the underdog" mentality caves in to buy a quad from the other guys...), I've had no problems at all with Vegas 8... other than getting used to the slightly different interface.

I know the spectre of a ground up rebuild isn't pleasant (why do you think my machine is overdue!), but once you've lost stability for any "have to have" functions and cannot use system restore sucessfully, it's the BEST solution and will save a lot of time and heartache.

HTH...

I really appreciate the many helpful replies to my plight with V8. However, I should have been a bit more specific, -these problems WERE after I had formatted a NEW 250g HDD and started with a completely clean install ! I feel I am reasonably confident with matters PC, as I have built many from scratch over the last 15 yrs. or so but this has really rocked me and I even wondered whether having upped to 4g of Ram recently was a contributing factor but I don't think so.

My thinking is, there is a bit of catch 22 here as this PC IS a dedicated Video editing machine and only connects to the web for up-dates etc. - (I keep the network plug pulled out normally), however, to load up XP it is necessary to connect to the web for usually over an hour to download & install all the patches. This is even after installing SP2 from a disc which I got from Microsoft. The problem as I see it, is the potential for a virus to attatch itself during this time of being connected, so that is why I have been quick to install a firewall & anti-virus software after this download from M/S.

So, with thanks to you guys, from your advice, - I do wish to persevere with V8 if I can, (it's the masochist in me !) I now intend to completely re-format AGAIN and start from scratch with no antivirus or reg. checkers. - Wish me luck !

Thanks again,

Ron.

Ron,

Couple of questions:

1. Were these problems around before the new drive?

2. What video card are you running?

3. Have you updated drivers since the clean install?

good luck,

marks

Thanks for your reply Mark. Yes there were problems on the existing setup with many random crashes and I spent over a week trying to do fixes to no avail. It was after this that I decided to remove the old C drive & install a new one, format & start again. The frightening thing was that even after this new install I was getting the odd error message like :

"One of the files containing system registry data had to be recovered by use of a log or alternate copy. The recovery was successful" - Hence my desire to install & run the registry check program.

And this was BEFORE I had even installed Vegas ! - Just the O'S with its myriad of updates plus essential things like Winzip, Adobe reader, Quicktime etc.

The Video card is also a recent one (about 6 weeks ago) and is an nVidea GeForce 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition.

Yes, I did update the drivers for the video card & the Mbd. Chipset. - BUT, just now in my quest to get things up to date, I downloaded and flashed the Mbd. BIOS as per instructions and when I re-booted, it had Failed !! (I have done this many times over the last 10 yrs. without a problem.) So now I am totally up the proverbial creek !! - Never before have I had this much trouble. As an editor, I am only a very serious amateur, I would hate to have to earn a living doing this, it's like a carpenter building a house and having to sharpen his chisel every 10 seconds and then spending hours on it.

So now it looks like A new Mbd. or go & buy a Mac. ! - Any suggestions for a new Mbd. if this is now the only way ?

Ron.

I really like my gigabyte P35=DS3R (allows a LOT of HDD's and quad Core 45nm procs)

Link here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128086

had a power surge get through the surge protector and network line and hurt the built in network jack. I also bought and installed a Firewire card with jack for the 6pin front Firewire 400 on my case since the board didn't come with one). Much cheaper than buying the board with similar HDD capability etc... at the time of purchase.

It's served me well so far, and I suggest it ( about to try it with 6 GB Ram and Vista 64, currently running Vista 32 and XP ).

Dave

upon looking now I might suggest this board for a bit more, but really I was mostly trying to keep a new build of a quad core machine in the sub 1K range so you can drop a little more money and get something better still, but I like my current one or this option as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128087

Thanks for your reply Mark. Yes there were problems on the existing setup with many random crashes and I spent over a week trying to do fixes to no avail. It was after this that I decided to remove the old C drive & install a new one, format & start again. The frightening thing was that even after this new install I was getting the odd error message like :

"One of the files containing system registry data had to be recovered by use of a log or alternate copy. The recovery was successful" - Hence my desire to install & run the registry check program.

And this was BEFORE I had even installed Vegas ! - Just the O'S with its myriad of updates plus essential things like Winzip, Adobe reader, Quicktime etc.

The Video card is also a recent one (about 6 weeks ago) and is an nVidea GeForce 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition.

Yes, I did update the drivers for the video card & the Mbd. Chipset. - BUT, just now in my quest to get things up to date, I downloaded and flashed the Mbd. BIOS as per instructions and when I re-booted, it had Failed !! (I have done this many times over the last 10 yrs. without a problem.) So now I am totally up the proverbial creek !! - Never before have I had this much trouble. As an editor, I am only a very serious amateur, I would hate to have to earn a living doing this, it's like a carpenter building a house and having to sharpen his chisel every 10 seconds and then spending hours on it.

So now it looks like A new Mbd. or go & buy a Mac. ! - Any suggestions for a new Mbd. if this is now the only way ?

Ron.

Ron,

I feel your pain. I smoked a MoBo about 6 weeks ago myself -- exact same scenario, BIOS flash gone bad.

I upgraded to a Phenom (bag for buck suited me), got an ASUS MoBo.

One thing though, I specifically upgraded to the nVidia GeForce 8600 as I had seen several reports of people with the 8800's have problems with crashes.

Just coincidence, I don't know, but my 8600 has worked a treat for me running 8.0b (build217). No hard evidence, but I did definitely get a *feeling* about the 8800's. Maybe checking this forum and the Sony forum might give a clue.

Would you have any chance to try a video card other than the 8800 - I know it would be a pain having spent the money and all, but it could just save your sanity.

I have found 8.0b to be very stable (but I only work in SD), and I love it.

Hope you get some joy in this matter.

Ciao,

marks

Thanks Mark, but would you believe it, I removed the cmos battery, shorted out the Mbd. terminals, re-installed battery and, SHE WOIKED !!
So now I am in the process of reinstalling everything AGAIN, (after another format), with no extras, only essentials. So far so good but only up to SP2 at the moment. I'll keep posting.

Ron.

hi folks ..just rebuilt again with intel Q9300 @3.2 with 4g ram nvidia 8800 gts 640 mb graphics card runing vista home premium 64 and vegas 8b ..stable, fast, rendering hdv captured with vegas edited native from canon XHA1 25f and 50i faultlessly and faster than realtime..cant wait for vegas 64..ps had 8800 for a year never a prob with vegas.

Vegas 8 - STILL CRASHING !! Yes, after another complete format and very clean install of V8 & associated software, - DVD Ach., Sound Forge 9, Cd Arh. 5.2, no antivirus and no Reg checker, it has just crashed suddenly with an instant BSOD and on auto restart it went in to a check disc mode. (No problems).

Curiously it appears that V8 doesn't seem to like it when I select from the audio timeline - "Open in Sound Forge", as so far, it occurs when I am editing a sound file opened in Sound Forge, exported from the Vegas timeline. This was also happenning before, amongst many other crashes. As my editing at present involves a live sound concert, I am continually switching to this program to clean up the audio. (A great feature within Vegas.)
My next move, as suggested by Mark, is to try a different video card, but I doubt whether this would be the cause.

System : P4 Dual core 2.1g, 4g RAM, 250g (C), 250g (video) Asus Mbd. P5N32-SE Deluxe, Graphics - nVidea Ge-Force 8800GT Alpha Dog.

Ron.

Ron, since you've reinstalled XP numerous times, I think you should be looking at the memory before you do anything else. Grab an copy of MemTest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/) and run it overnight. If there are no errors then reposition the memory modules and run it again. If there are still no errors, you should consider replacing the MotherBoard with a similar one from another manufacturer. I run a P35 based MB from MSI and it runs Vegas 8 flawlessly.

If you have any reason to doubt the XP installation, reload it one more time. Be sure to backup any data you will miss to another drive FIRST. Run the full format during installation and once XP is operational, install your drivers in this order.

1) Intel INF update (very important)
2) video driver
3) ethernet driver
4) audio driver
5) others...

Do not use the drivers from the motherboard CDROM or the ones at support.asus.com because they are sure to be out of date and probably buggy in some way. Get the latest drivers directly from the manufacturers website and burn them to CD so you have easy access to them.

Once the drivers are installed, the system should as stable as it's going to be. Install only the applications you need. If you're using commercial antivirus, leave it off. Download and install SpywareTerminator and ClamWin instead. They seem to have a smaller footprint in the OS/Registry and work well enough at preventing infections.

If it's still unstable after all this get a Mac!! :lol: I don't think it will be that bad. I'm guessing the RAM will have a bad bit somewhere that Vegas8 is finding.

While I agree with many of Andy's suggestion I would first contact Sony support before declaring war (switching out MOBO), if you haven't already. It is possible they might end up shrugging their shoulders and not have an answer for you, on the other hand they might.

While I am not a huge fan of Asus, or even DIY pc systems (the last ASUS MOBO I purchased gave me all kinds of fits I truly hate their website and their drivers were wacked) I would still go through Sony support first.

If you have access to Vista you might try running it in trial mode and seeing if it works, since Soundforge 9 and Vegas are both optimized for Vista now. For some reason I feel (no concrete reason, just a gut feeling) that Vista could overcome this issue. I know everyone (or many people HATE Vista) but unfortunately it is what software programs are being designed to work with now.

I am running Vista 64 bit and it runs beautifully. I am having issues with audio, but it is not a Vista issue, it is something I experienced with XP also.

have to agree with Andy.this sounds def like memory issue but it could also be somthing as simple as a flakey PSU i would put money on it not being vegas because from what you describe alot more people would be having the same issues. A dodgy ddr module can cause all sorts of problems even when just installing an OS and i have come across one PC i was trying to fix that had 2 bad sticks.Ive used ASUS boards with no probs but im using an ABIT one just now as better support for my Q9300

I must admit in retrospect that John's advice sounds like an excellent first next step given how simple it is to test memory.

I skimmed this, but me thinks Vegas is just a symptom here of a PC issue that would happen no matter what.

You'll find a clue in the event viewer in windows. Look at the time/date last time it happened, see of there are any logs. You can paste the event that corresponds and I'll look at it next time I am on. all the leading c000005 (c00000f1b, ..... ) stuff is what's needed. The first value tells you where to look. The memtest 86 is a great idea running overnight.

Also, there may be a DMP file that can be useful. Windows by default writes a mini-dump file. If not, it can be turned on in system properties, advanced, startup & recovery settings. I'd "dial-up" logging since BSOD's are by definition uncontrolled, you may not get too much before it dies.
Location for DMP files are:
c:\%SystemRoot%\Minidump
[%SystemRoot% = windows]

One item I immediatly suspect is nvidia card. I love them, but they can be flaky as heck on early driver revs. (30% of Vista issues go back to nvidia, according to microsoft stats!--> http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/28/nvidia_vista_drivers/ ) Despite this I still recommend them, as a good video card is always bleeding edge stuff.

First, Turn off hardware acceleration on nvidia. No luck?, uninstall the nvidia driver and use the windows SVGA or XGA driver. looks awful, but stable. Obviously, you can use another card too for a while.

As mentioned earlier - best bet, "no troubleshooting" method of stopping this is to ensure you have latest drivers, especially firmware (BIOS), as well as VGA card bios if available. Also the latest chipset (north/southbridge) is very important.
Turn off any overclocking and you were spot-on to pull the button batt and force the bios back to defaults.

Once all drivers are updated, simplify the circuit. unplug power to non-essential stuff (if possible) and in Device Manager, disable everything you can and see if the issue goes away.

To speed this process up, once you get to the point where it is stable, re-enable perhaps half of the devices you've disabled, see if it crashes. if so, disable half of them. If it becomes stable again, then it's one of those you disabled. If not, these are probably ok and do the same with the other set.

Generally BSOD is hardware related, wrong ram type, video card driver behaving badly. So pulling HW is useful, though not always practical.
Recognize this could also point back to power supply.
But the BSOD values will really speed you to resolution.

A fresh download of 8b? Perhaps it's gotten corrupted somewhere along the way. Yes, I know, the automatic checksum test should catch this... just trying to exhaust the easy stuff. But it is definitely time for a mem test.

My gigabyte P35 DS3R died Friday night after 6 weeks of use. On Saturday I exchanged it for a new board at MicroCenter (very good customer service). Back in full service Sunday morning. I am leaving this one on and burn in for 30 days straight. Hopefully I don't have to go through that again!

I have had a couple of reboot issues (prior to new board) that I am assuming are related to Vista Ultimate and program compatibility and not the motherboard. I was working with a 4 gig Vegas project today and it just will not run with that size of project. Kept getting not responding issues that eventually go away until you try again! I hope 8c solves this problem. Other than the size problem I haven't had any problems with 8b but I don't do HD yet.

All I can say is "Wow". You guys are great ! It is interesting that you mention the memory, as I only added an extra 2g about six weeks ago, - around the same time as I up-graded the graphics card. However, during last week's debacle I downloaded a memory check and ran it from the microsoft site which was suggested from the many issues while checking with them. It took about half an hour and came up OK, so since then I assumed the Mem. was OK. Incidentally I am using expensive matched Corsair RAM which here in sunny Sydney is more expensive than Kingston if that means anything !

However, thank you Andy for suggesting this other long term memory test site. I will give it a try. Also, thanks for the tip re Intel. I have never done that one! Curiously though, when I got the mbd. going again after removing the battery, it came up with the new BIOS that I had flashed it to. So the outcome was good in a quirky sort of way even if it did give me more gray hairs ! Yes, I did download a new version of Vegas.

I am not into overclocking and I always do an overkill with power supplies and when I am not downloading on this PC the internet plug is pulled out, so I think I am safe here, but it is interesting to hear about Vista as I am very skeptical about it. I was thinking of buying a later version of XP as mine is a 2002 version which requires 95 updates after SP2 ! Maybe this is not a problem and I should consider Vista instead if I really want to donate to "Bill. "

Thank you all again and yes, I will check with Sony. Being more of a sound guy, I really like what Vegas offers even though I find some things very quirky but that is another issue when I get a stable system.
Well, back to the PC. I'll keep you posted.

Ron.

I use Kingston "Value RAM" exclusively in the systems I build. It seems to be a fair compromise between cheap ram and the pedigree stuff. I've bought the expensive RAM and not noticed much difference except for a higher failure rate (which could have been luck of the draw so don't quote on that).

95 updates after SP2 is normal. SP3 will fix that and is due anytime now. My take on Vista is to wait and then wait some more. It's got problems but eventually it will be our only choice. Until then, XP works with more hardware, software, is more familiar and is easier to work with.

Guys, it's worth noting that, as Vegas is a user-mode application, it should be *impossible* for Vegas to blue-screen your OS.

Vegas can definitely precipitate a blue-screen (e.g. bad audio driver, bad disk driver, bad RAM), but the responsibility for a blue-screen lies either with hardware or kernel-mode software.

I recently put some new RAM in my system, and the system ran fine until I was rendering with Vegas 8.0. Then, reboots, every time. Knowing what I know, I installed/ran SiSoft Sandra, and that caused reboots as well.

New RAM out, old RAM in.

-Matt

I am running Vegas 8 Pro on a Dell AMD 5000+ sys that came with 2gigs of RAM that I upgraded to 4gigs with a brand of RAM I don't remember (on sale).

I have a GEFORCE 8600 GT 256mb graphics card and I am running VISTA home premium.

I installed Vegas 6 and immediately upgraded to Vegas 8, all with no problems. I have been playing for it for about a month now with absolutely no issues. Very stable. I have edited, and rendered in Vegas and burned DVD's in DVD Archietect. All with no issues.

Because of the recent changes in your system with new hard drives, memory, graphics card, etc I have a feeling your issues are system related and not Vegas related.

I am wondering if your problem has something to do with the relationship between SoundForge and Vegas. Does the computer crash when you just use SoundForge alone? Vegas alone? Are both aps configured to use the same audio driver type, like ASIO for example? If so, is Vegas and SF configured to share the ASIO driver? Mybe you could put both in standard windows audio mode for a test?

From my experiences with bad memory the crashes are more random. If the only time you experience a crash is when you open SF from Vegas, I think there maybe something more specific. Maybe try going back a build in SF to say 9d or if you havn't upgraded to 9e yet maybe you could try that.

You could try downloading a demo of Audition or Soundbooth from Adobe to see if Vegas crashes with them as well. The other possibility is the Izotope RX stuff can now be used as a plugin from inside Vegas. I am considering this route for audio cleanup myself.

Good Luck!

Vegas can definitely precipitate a blue-screen (e.g. bad audio driver, bad disk driver, bad RAM), but the responsibility for a blue-screen lies either with hardware or kernel-mode software.


-Matt

Since he is having problems with Vegas and Sound Forge, first thing that comes to my mind is an audio driver and/or sound card issue. Vegas and Sound forge use the sound card and that may be triggering a possible problem with it.

The new video card could be causing problems with the sound card by way of drivers-resources and/or interupts.

Problem is most likely hardware and/or driver related.

However, if I understand the posts correctly he is having to install SP2 after the initial install of Windows XP? I used to have problems with that type of install. I now have XP Pro with SP 2 included and the problems I use to have are gone. Been a while so I don't remember what the problems were but I do know that all works so much better now.

Hope this helps.

Danny Fye
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

I have just turned on the PC and after it failed to load properly it auto re-booted with the message : "Windows has recovered from a serious error."
Looking at the details, (which won't copy), it shows -
Error signature
BCCode : 1000008e BCP1 : C0000005 BCP2 : 45FFAAA0 BCP3 : F7596974 BCP4 : 00000000

Apparently, according to Microsoft this is a "Stop Error" but as this is all greek to me, maybe Andy & James might care to comment.

Incidentally, I tried to download and run the memory test and the Intel INF update last night but both were not able to work on this machine. My next move is to remove and or, re-arrange the memory.

As this latest saga has happened with out any programs running it is becoming more obvious that the issues are PC related.

Ron.

You might try taking out 2 gigs of memory and running it, then try the other two gigs, or even try running just 1 at a time if you don't need to run it in pairs (don't remember what kind of memory your running or if you even mentioned that). That would be a quick and dirty way of tracking down bad sticks.

Sorry I missed your response...

memtest86+ is an ISO image that you burn to CDROM and boot the machine off of. You don't run it out of windows... be sure to read the instructions :)

If you can't get memtest working, I'd try removing a pair of memory modules to see if that helps (or at least changes the situation). Juggle them around until you find an arrangement that works.

Definitely have some hardware demons causing your headache's!

last year I had a really bad time with my home build computer locking up and it kept on looking like memory issues. I finally painfully traced it down to the BIOS reading the wrong latency settings off of the RAM; I checked the proper settings online, reset the latency to what the ram should have been running at and haven't had a crash since. Very cheap fix.

As this latest saga has happened with out any programs running it is becoming more obvious that the issues are PC related.

Ron.

It's too bad that you can't change the title of this thread, since it appears that Vegas 8 is NOT an "unmitigated disaster."

I agree John. However anyone reading the thread in it's entirety will see how the process goes so often when tracking down problems.

Just skimmed the thread and thought I would chime in:

I had endless crashes with Vegas 7e, 8a and 8b that I tracked down to two separate problems. Now after fixing these, everything is quite stable. Just in case your problems are similar to what mine where here are the two issues I corrected:

1/ Cineform Neo HDV installs a driver called "AJACaptureFilter.ax" which apparently is prone to crashing Vegas if you don't have the AJA card installed. Just do a search for "AJACaptureFilter.ax" and delete it. Unless you have this card you don't need it. This fixed the constant crashing I was getting when I used Cineform NeoHDV clips.

2/ I started to turn off my Virus protection program every time I capture HDV video. It seems that my constant crashing with native m2t clips was due to errors that were introduced (but not reported) when I captured with either HDVSplit or Vegas's capture utility. Since no dropped frames were reported I thought that the captures had been fine. They weren't. There were some kind of formatting errors that were embedded in my m2t clips that would make them crash Vegas. Since I started disabling my virus protection during capture, I have done maybe seven or eight tapes that have given me no problems whatsoever.

Vegas has been working perfectly lately for me, but I can really feel for you. Until I worked through these two issues, the phrase "unmitigated disaster" sounds like a pretty accurate description of my experience.

I upgraded to Vegas 8 mainly so I would have a second machine to edit
EX1 files. but I still have not been able to get the XDCAM utility in the editor to work. I read something about converting the files to some other file format MXF?
SO if anyone has any wisdom I would love to have it.

Other wise I am stuck with FCP.

Ed

Ed Mellnick, what a blast from the past. We worked on a project in... 1985? (I was at Creative Media, you were downstairs on NW Kearney(?)

Do a little search of the forum, lots of good info on EX1 and Vegas Pro8. This has worked for others, it should work for you. Sorry I can't help directly, I've not shot with the EX1 yet.

You'll want to look at this:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=108339

And this:
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/camcorders/XDCAM_EX_in_Sony_Vegas8.htm