I've been using AE for many years now with no issues. Today, however, I purchased an AE template that includes 6 scenes. When I tried to render it, I got the blue screen of death. I don't think it's a cache issue, my hard drive has over 100 gigs available. I tried changing the ram settings under AE6 preferences, but still the BSOD. Is my RAM too small to handle this project? I've rendered other AE projects with no problems. What should I try next?

Windows 7 64 bit professional, AMD Phenom II x6 1090T, 4 gig dual channel DDR3 @ 644MHz, ATI Radeon HD 5700, CS6

Warren, it's years since I've seen a DSOD, and I thought Windows 7 was almost immune from them. Looking at your system specs, I was not familiar with your CPU, but I'd guess it should be OK from where it sits in this Toms Hardware chart:

Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart - Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: May 2013 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html)

4Gb RAM is definitely pushing your luck though. 8 is a realistic minimum, and 16 or more to get into the comfort zone. 100Gb spare HDD space also doesn't fill me with confidence. Do you just have the one drive? So I am thinking you might be pushing your luck with your current hardware configuration. RAM is not that expensive nowadays. How much would your MB support?

Trevor, thanks for the response. I was thinking it might be that I'm lacking enough ram too. I could add more, but was perplexed because I've been using my system for 3 years now with no problems prior. I can also render other projects with no problem, just this new template is giving me problems.

One thing I noticed though, is that when I get the bcod, my ram usage is only 50% out of 4 gigs. On other previous projects, my ram usage was 55% and no crash.

Warren, do you just have the one drive? And do you have 'Enable disk cache' in Preferences > Media and Disk Cache? You'd think your 100Gb of free drive space would be enough, but maybe it's not that simple. If you are going to look at your hardware, lots more RAM, and at least one more drive you can allocate AE's disk cache to.

Last night, I disabled overclocking before rendering. It worked fine! Slower than before, but at least no bsod. I'll slowly crank it back up to see at what point it fails.