i do have program on C and all images on D drive. But the drive shouldnt power down as i'm using them both all the time. I also use the same for audio work and there's no problem there. I actually can't find an option to change a drive's power options, just a general one

I've been using VMS since Version 8 and it has always crashed. It still does. My sense is it is just the nature of the beast - the program's internal structure is simply so complex the developers are unable to identify all the possible situations in which a crash can occur.

In previous versions it was possible to reduce the frequency of crashes by doing things like installing the 64-bit fix; resizing still images to be the same size as the final rendered output; allocating more RAM for temp files; transcoding different types of video input to be all the same, etc.

Aside from the 64-bit fix (no longer needed) and allocating more RAM (I still do that) I never went to the trouble of doing those other things because it just wasn't worth the effort to me. Vegas's built-in crash recovery system works very well and I'm ok with losing a few seconds of work once in a while.

My guess is the crashes will always be a "feature" of VMS. I've become used to them and I am a long way away from having the crashes prompt me to switch to a different editor. I'm not so sure those other ones crash any less, although that would be interesting information to have.

The bottom line is that Sony is simply not willing to invest the resources required to totally debug VMS. That's a pure business decision they are making, not a technical one, and I expect they are not going to change their mind on that any time soon. So we users have a simple choice: Love it or leave it.

thanks for telling it like it is. my crashes are so common that it interrupts workflow quite radically. It's very frustrating.. i'll upgrade ram and when i get a new machine the card and cpu but if it still does this i will investigate other software

I agree with Birk's last statement 1st of all.

One thing sometimes overlooked in the quest to find the perfect software patch, is checking your Windows Event Viewer. Failing hardware like disk controllers, RAM, cheap audio chipset, or even other hardware seemingly unrelated can kill application task switching. Programs like Word run in a bubble and make almost no direct hardware calls, and windows does a good job of isolating issues from impacting stability. Programs like Vegas make a lot of direct hardware calls for speed, and errors with the OS or below can become very apparent.

If you build your own systems, I always use Intel on Intel and generally research the flagship chipset for the CPU chosen. Chipsets from VIA and SiS are maybe not the most robust solution for a video editing. I also look for motherboards that have only what I need on them and not the all-in-one special hot deal. Speccy is a good utility for visibility into this, as well as checking for heat problems.

Something I do when trying to solve stability issues, is to remove all add-on cards and software, including usb hardware like webcams and what not. So that you only have the PC, video card, disks and Vegas. Then re-install the other hardware one at a time, checking the event viewer for changes. Going into the BIOS and disabling hardwired USB controllers, raid controllers and Audio chipsets not used during this process also eliminates these components. A clean install can help make this faster, at some point in the process you may uncover that some add-on device is actually creating problems for you.

Permissions from moving hard drives between systems and not reformatting them, or old file share shortcuts that are no longer reachable can also cause system hang issues. Bad destinations stored in the registry can cause the system to try and reach them and wait for timeout. Things like the bad URLs can be determined with WireShark, if the system is looking for stuff on the network when you shift tasks, you will see bad requests on the wire. Resolving permissions errors shown in the Event Viewer could solve problems.

Finding a stable system config is hard when we expect them to everything we are interested in doing under the sun. Companies do not spend time testing interoperabilty with other products, they test their own product.

mindboggling