I have Outllook and Screenblast with no conflicts.

The following is not a solution to your problem, but it may help.

When you work on your computer, you open and close various applications, sometimes repeatedly. With time the RAM in your computer becomes defragmented just like your hard drive does. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a RAM defragmenter. Also, some programs will lock RAM. Locked RAM is memory that has been locked by Windows and can not be swapped out to the disk for use by all programs. The locking is done at a request from individual applications, such as Outlook. Your only solution is to cold boot your PC, which clears out the RAM. Cold boot means to turn off the computer for at least 1 minute and start it up. Warm boot means restart.

If I am using Screenblast I always cold boot and use only Screenblast. I notice better perfromance this way.

This is from the User guide:

Additional Information about DVD media and DVD burning
Exit all other open software programs and disable screen savers
Cancel any scheduled timer recording sessions
Do not connect or disconnect cables or attach devices
Do not attempt to access the Internet or other network services
Do not start additional software programs

Note: I ususally set Power Options in the Control Panel to Never turn off, I saved this Scheme as BurnDVD


The blue screens I have had in the past on other/older computers were usually caused by video drivers. Reinstalling the original drivers normally fixed the problem. I also had blue screens caused by defective RAM.

Finally, You may want to create another user account (in Windows XP) and install it Screenblast from the new user. (after you uninstalled your existing copy) There could be some some registry issues with your user account.

I wondered about the video driver, but am confused on updating the driver... I looked through the control/system things but not sure what driver to get.

Also, my machine has nView from nVIDIA which has me a little concerned. I don't recall why, but this message on video drivers partially kicked in a memory about nView. I was doing something with video output to a TV... and that may have been when the crashes started. It times out with Screenblast since I was making a holiday video, and copying to VCR.

These comments confirm my thoughts that its a good idea to do cold starts for video work... and emphasizes the importance.

I may dig through my disks from Dell to try re-installing the video driver. I haven't installed drivers (other than from software install) for so long that I somewhat forgot how.

I'll focus on video driver for now. Other reply also mentioned this, and now I'm wondering about the nView software. It could have entered picture about the same time crashes occured.

It seems to me that a new nvidia driver was part of a recent update for WinXP..... I could be wrong.

It would be BEST to install the latest nVidia driver from their web site. Not the original as I mentioned. First find which video card you have.

Go to Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings (at this point write down screen resolution & color quality), then go to: Advanced, Adapter
Your Video Card will be listed. Write it down.

No go to: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Choose Graphics Driver, model, Operating system & GO

Click on Installation hints.
It says to uninstall the existing driver and tells you how to do it. Don't do i t yet, just print the instructions. Now download the new driver, I usually choose Primary Download site, Save the new driver to your hard drive. Write down where you saved it.

Now uninstall the existing driver, reboot, Windows Icons will probably look very large.

Go to Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced, Adapter, Properties, Driver, Update Driver. Install from a list or specific location, Use Browse to find the driver you downloaded. Continue on until done and reboot the machine.

Now Go to Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings set screen resolution & color quality to match original settings

It would help if we had either the model number or, better yet, the service tag of your Dell. Then we could point you in the right direction for updates.

Find the correct driver has turned into more of a problem than I thought. The driver listed under display properties settings is Dell C840. Expanded details from the device manager for the C840 is NVIDIA, date 2/10/2003, version 4.2.5.8.

Nothing much matches up to that at NVIDIA.

Logic at this forum - that video driver was likely the problem - seemed good, so I checked at Dell Support forum and downloads, but not much more luck
- Dell diagnostics shows I have a Dell C840 video adaptor.
- Order acknowledgement lists it as 32MB DDR 4X AGP NVidia NV17 3D video for Inspiron 8200.
- Downloads only lists GeForce2 GO & GeForce4 440 Go (plus ATI & Roxio drivers)