Vegas 8 - an unmitigated disaster !!

Ron Cooper · April 20th, 2008, 06:28 AM

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.

Andy Mace · April 20th, 2008, 07:02 AM

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+ 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Do not use the drivers from the motherboard CDROM or the ones at support.asus.com because they are sure to be out of date and probably buggy in some way.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.

Jeff Harper · April 20th, 2008, 07:16 AM

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.

John Estcourt · April 20th, 2008, 10:47 AM

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

Jeff Harper · April 20th, 2008, 11:12 AM

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

James Harring · April 20th, 2008, 11:54 AM

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...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.

Seth Bloombaum · April 20th, 2008, 01:04 PM

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.

Harold Brown · April 20th, 2008, 08:51 PM

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.

Ron Cooper · April 21st, 2008, 02:41 AM

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.

Andy Mace · April 21st, 2008, 06:37 AM

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.

Matthew Chaboud · April 21st, 2008, 09:34 AM

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

D.J. Ammons · April 21st, 2008, 04:31 PM

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.

Ken Campbell · April 22nd, 2008, 02:01 AM

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!

Danny Fye · April 23rd, 2008, 02:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew Chaboud

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

Ron Cooper · April 23rd, 2008, 06:05 AM

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.

April 20th, 2008, 11:54 AM	#21
James Harring Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Tampa, FL Posts: 210	Bsod 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...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.

April 20th, 2008, 08:51 PM	#23
Harold Brown Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: North East Ohio Posts: 84	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. __________________ Harold BhagaVideo.com

April 20th, 2008, 06:28 AM	#16
Ron Cooper Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 481	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.

April 20th, 2008, 07:02 AM	#17
Andy Mace Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Tallahassee, Florida Posts: 39	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+ 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.

April 20th, 2008, 07:16 AM	#18
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	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.

April 20th, 2008, 10:47 AM	#19
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	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

April 20th, 2008, 11:12 AM	#20
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	I must admit in retrospect that John's advice sounds like an excellent first next step given how simple it is to test memory.

April 20th, 2008, 01:04 PM	#22
Seth Bloombaum Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Portland, Oregon Posts: 3,420	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.

April 21st, 2008, 02:41 AM	#24
Ron Cooper Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 481	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.

April 21st, 2008, 06:37 AM	#25
Andy Mace Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Tallahassee, Florida Posts: 39	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.

April 21st, 2008, 09:34 AM	#26
Matthew Chaboud Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Chicago, IL, USA Posts: 93	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

April 21st, 2008, 04:31 PM	#27
D.J. Ammons Major Player Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 506	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.

April 22nd, 2008, 02:01 AM	#28
Ken Campbell Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Milan, Italy Posts: 140	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!

April 23rd, 2008, 06:05 AM	#30
Ron Cooper Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 481	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.