This is your first post here - Hi!

However:-

A] Project Settings?

B] Project Media?

C] Render Template?

D] Hard Disc Setups: C: System plus Video or what? Other Drives?

E] What space available?

VP9 has been very stable for me, especially for SD work.

Grazie

Ditto here. I'd also suggest Memtest; something is breaking on the PC. But I've never seen a "low on ram" message so I'm just guessing here. Rendering is hard on a computer, with temps maxing out and such. When was the last time you vacuumed out all the dust on the CPU heatsink? It makes a huge difference on CPU temperature as measured by MotherboardMonitor on my system.

I've done many complex HD projects with 7d and now I've done two projects with 9, and the system (hardware/software) is very stable. A few years back I did have issues and I found it was a memory stick causing them.

Many times I do all my edits using the 32 bit SVP 9.0 (I believe it to be more stable than the 64 bit version). But then I do my final rendering using the 64 bit version. This does two things. It definitely runs faster, and it gives the program access to more RAM. In your case this second point is arguable since you only have 2 GB to start with. But one thing's for sure, I've never seen the low resources indication rendering with the 64 bit SVP, but I have using the 32 bit version.

a) Verify that you are running 9.0e build 1147 (Help > About Vegas Pro); install update as needed
b) Make sure your hard drive isn't filled close to its capacity
c) Defragment your hard drive(s)

A temporary workaround would be to render some of the complcated sections and delete the the sections you just rendered from your project and place the rendered files in place of the deleted sections. This will free up tons of memory.
JJK

[b]" it eventually says that the system is running low on ram"[b]

I'll bet the error message is that Windows is running low on MEMORY - not RAM. Not the same thing.

This has got to be the second stupidest error message that the Microsoft Windows engineers came up with. (The first being "No keyboard found. Press any key to continue").

And I have posted on this issue many, many times in the past.

Low Memory or Out of Memory does not mean "Not enough RAM", though adding RAM can sometimes fix a "Low Memory" waning. A "Low Memory" warning usually means that you have exceeded your commit limit. You need either a bigger page file, more physical memory, or both.

One of the biggest sources of confusion over Windows memory usage is the whole concept of virtual memory compared to physical memory. Windows organizes memory, physical and virtual, into pages. Each page is a fixed size (typically 4 KB). To make things more confusing, there’s also a page file (sometimes referred to as a paging file and dynamic RAM). Many Windows users still think of this as a swap file, a bit of disk storage that is only called into play when you absolutely run out of physical RAM. In versions of Windows starting with Vista, that is no longer the case. The most important thing to realize is that physical memory and the page file added together equal the commit limit, which is the total amount of virtual memory that all processes can reserve and commit.

Start the Task Manager, click on the "Processes" tab, then click on "Commit Size" to sort by size. This will show you which processes are memory hogs that you may be able to shut down.

All Windows since XP (and Unix/Linux for that matter) always wants to have page space. Always. Programs (including drivers and codecs) like to and are allowed to pre-allocate as much memory as they want. Even if they are never ever going to actually use it. Sometimes those programs properly deallocate memory, sometimes they don't (resulting in "memory leak"). Sometimes, programs leave parts of themselves in allocated memory just in case you are going to run that program again. (MS Word, Excel and other Office programs are particularly adept at this). If you have no page file and a program wants to commit some for itself, your PC will crash (AKA, BSOD, or Blue Screen of Death).

Paging file configuration is in the System properties, which you can get to by typing "sysdm.cpl" into the Run dialog, clicking on the Advanced tab, clicking on the Performance Options button, clicking on the Advanced tab, and then clicking on the Change button. I would suggest a value of 1.5X the currently allocated value. The old advice of 2X or 3X your RAM is, well, old advice when a few MB of RAM was normal. 64-bit Windows can having paging files that are up to 16TB in sizeand supports up to 16 paging files, where each must be on a separate volume."

DO NOT put a paging file on an external drive because if it's not present when Windows boots, then Windows will crash.

For more information, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

If you don't mind, I'll join the discussion here since I have a similar problem.

New computer: Win7 premium 64 bit - 4GB memory - quad core - 500GB hard drive - Radeon HD 6530 graphics card.

Sony Vegas Platinum 10.0

I try to render in either .wmv, mp4, .mov. and get this: "The system is low on memory. You may be able to reduce memory usage by closing other applications".

No other apps were open, so what I have done is taken the .avi advice, but would love to make the rest work. I am editing a documentary and only have about 15 minutes of it in the can.