I'm having problems with XP freezing or crashing while encoding DVD's (normally from avi to mpeg). I'm using Roxio (Easy CD 6) and have uninstalled any other DVD burning/ripping/encoding software, such as Nero so there are no conflicts. Sometimes, I can encode a whole film and then burn it onto a DVD with no problems. At other times, Roxio will encode an unspecific length (any time from 10 minutes to 4 hours) and will freeze or shut down my computer when it feels like it, either giving an error message saying it has to close or just shutting down the PC. Has anyone else had similar problems or does anyone know how to fix this please? It's very annoying waiting 4 hours to encode a film only to have the PC shutting down just before it's finished and I have to start all over again!

I had a great many issues similar to what you are seeing. They were caused by background programs running and trying to call home on a regular basis. As you can't see what background services are running you can't stop them from happening. My way around the issue was that I installed a second drive and used "BootItNG" as the boot manager to install a second xp OS and deleted all unneccesary items from it. It is strictly used for copying/editing purposes only and I have had no more issues whatsoever. IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK

Thanks for your suggestion. However, I already have a dual boot system with Windows ME on the other drive (I know, it's slow, outdated and forever showing the BSOD but I have my reasons for using a dual boot!). I have thought about using ME for video editing etc. but that leads to other problems with my graphics card, which I won't go in to as it's an altogether different thread and will get very confusing!

I run 5 seperate self booting OS through BootItNG. Haveing a multiboot is no problem. I set it up this way because the M$ boot manager has an issue about MBR's It only wants to deal with 1 so it overrides all the others. Each OS has it's own MBR and BootItNG hides them so as to keep them undamaged from each other. It tracks the bootable drives by name instead of letter designation so that which ever one you boot with will be default"C" drive and makes all other partitions or HDD acceptable to "C" Any way it is available for 30 day free trial and it allowed me to solve my movie making issues by having a seperate drive committed to just that. IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK