Sorry Alex, I meant 875 (533FSB/800 Mhz). Thanks very much for your response.
Randy

Randy,
Vegas seems to be very particular when it comes to user accounts. From what tech support has told me- do not use the original admin user account- set up an additional account with all the priveledges and most of your problems "go away". They say if the user account is corrupted in any way- it seems like the only program hurt, is Vegas. I also found on my system- my printers removable hardware drive played havoc with my system. I have an Epson photo printer w/ usb and harddrive/media reader. I disabled the Epson MAss Storage driver and everything moved along much better. Check you IRQ's for any conflicts- Device Manager/ (view) resources by type/Interrupt request(IRQ)

Thank you AZEdit, as far as IRQs my video card is sharing with USB Universal Host controller 24D2 and 24DE (whaterver that means) and Pro/1000 CT network connection is sharing with USB Universal Host Controller 24D7 and Ultra ATA Storage Controller.
Another noticeable factor is that it seems to take a while of editing before the problems start occuring.
>>set up an additional account << I have set up another computer administrator account. I'll test it today (and keep my fingers crossed). In case that is the problem should I just delete the corrupted account?
Thanks again,
Randy

It sounds like you have too many devices on your PC Randy. Do you really need that complex a setup? So much stuff goes through your video card to force it to share a IRQ is just asking for trouble. Then on top of that you got your hard drive controller sharing a IRQ with your USB controller?

I'm surprirsed your PC doesn't crash constantly. In effect what it sounds like is when the traffic lights go out, and the intersection gets converted to a default 4 way stop with everyone supposed taking their turn. Of course we all know some drivers start up, pause, start again, then sometime two drivers start at once and some drivres think they should go right through regardless if its their turn or not.

Remember what a IRQ is. Its an interpution request. When a device needs attention it raises a flag to get the CPU's attention. When devices are forced to share an IRQ, it can be similar to that forced 4 way stop. Sotimes it goes smoothly, somtimes not.

Check this out: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/res/irq/num.htm

Thanks BB, I was hoping you would be around !

>>It sounds like you have too many devices on your PC Randy.<<

The plan was, to use this as a dedicated V4 machine; assuming you mean hardware devices, the only devices I can think of that I have installed are a Delta 1010 PCI sound card with breakout box with 10 I/Os, Contour Shuttle Pro, and a network card.

>>Do you really need that complex a setup? So much stuff goes through your video card to force it to share a IRQ is just asking for trouble.<<
I've heard it's impossible (or at least very hard) to change IRQs in XP. Can you tell me how I could put the (NVidia GEForce MX440 dual) video card on it's own IRQ?

>>Then on top of that you got your hard drive controller sharing a IRQ with your USB controller?<<

Not intentionally, any suggestions?

>>I'm surprirsed your PC doesn't crash constantly.<<

I have been stumped as to why my older, cheaper, less powerful machine is faster than my newer, "faster", expensive one!

>>Of course we all know some drivers start up, pause, start again, then sometime two drivers start at once and some drivres think they should go right through regardless if its their turn or not. Remember what a IRQ is. Its an interpution request. When a device needs attention it raises a flag to get the CPU's attention. When devices are forced to share an IRQ, it can be similar to that forced 4 way stop. Sotimes it goes smoothly, somtimes not.<<

Finally an analogy I can understand; you're the best BB!

>>Check this out: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/res/irq/num.htm<<

I did for about 10 minutes and then realized that I'll need to set aside some time to really grasp it.

Thanks again BB,
Randy

After trying AZEdit's suggestion and logged in on my "test" account I noticed my pre-rendered sections of a project I've been working on showed up on the monitor as a white screen. On this particular project I'm having to use a lot of special effects and so I'm pre-rendering in MPEG2 instead of AVI because it's about twice as fast. Could this have anything to do with my problem? Now I should mention, it was still sluggish before selecting MPEG2 but it wasn't down to a crawl.

Update: please disregard the comment on the white screen, everything is "normal" again after changing from "preview (auto)" to "preview (full)" but still wondering about Mpeg pre-renders; I just remembered, yesterday I was also getting an "unknown error" when pre-rendering a "text media".
TIA,
Randy

Randy... I agree with what Billy Boy stated. Your IRQ situation raised a red flag here also....as far as mpeg 2 editing in Vegas... it will edit mpeg 2, but the system is designed for DV video. You will find your system will function slower using Mpeg. That, along with your congestion will result in slower performance on this dedicated machine

Thanks AZEdit,
>>...along with your congestion will result in slower performance ...<<
Can someone please advise as to what should be done regarding this congestion; I don't know how to change IRQs in XP (other than just moving devices around trying different PCI slots and hope for the best).
Thanks,
Randy

It is hard to guess what the problem is if it worked before and now don't on your newer system. Time to dig out your motherboard manual or user's manual if you have a prebuilt system and see which slots support shared IRQ's. Then just avoid those slots. With some BIOS you can map a IRQ to a device and hopefully prevent Windows from changing it or allowing sharing.

You do have the latest drivers for the card? They are "certifed" for Windows XP? I looked in Microsoft's Knowledge base for known problems and didn't see any.

Did find this: http://www.espace-cubase.org/anglais/page.php?page=latence