Is there a lot of transitions, effects and things like that on the video. Just adding one effect to your entire video can REALLY increase your render times.

I haven't done a VCD in a long time. I just put exactly 60 seconds of video on my timeline and rendered using the VCD template. It took 83 seconds on my 2.8 GHz P4 which is stripped of everything (even anti-virus).

You have 45 minutes of video. It has taken 240 minutes so far (4 hours) and is 54% complete. It should therefore complete in 240/0.54 = 444 minutes.

Now on my system, if I were rendering this video and IF (and this is a big if) there were no effects, transitions, etc., this would take 45 * (83/60) = 62 minutes to render. Your system is a 2.0 GHz computer, so it will take longer. To be precise, it should render in (2.8/2.0) * 62 = 87 minutes.

Since it is taking over five times as much time, then you probably have lots of fX and transitions. The way to start breaking down where the problem (if any) lies is to take exactly one minute of video and, without adding any fX, transitions, etc., place it on the timeline, and render it to a MPEG1 VCD file. My one minute test took 83 seconds. Yours should take (2.8/2.0)*83 = 116 seconds. It might take a little more or a little less. It shouldn't take more than 2.5 minutes.

If the one minute test finishes in less than three minutes, then the problem with your long render is in your project file as was already suggested by Jsnkc. You will need to look to make sure you don't have supersample enabled; make sure you didn't accidentally bump any of the track levels to something other than 100%; make sure the opacity for each evnt is still set to 100% (put your cursor at the top of the event and stop -- the opacity level will popup).

Ok I will check the settings. But there are NO FX on the track. I just dragged the AVI file onto a track and rendered.

The AVI has DIVXMPG4 video compression. Does this slow it down? I just opened a second copy of Vegas (my first is 77% complete after about 8 hours) and tried to render 1 minute of the AVI with NO FX or transitions and the approximate time to complete is estimated at 50 minutes.

Something seems weird.

The AVI has DIVXMPG4 video compression. Does this slow it down?

Yep, that would do it.

I just have to tell you JohnMeyer that your answer with the calculations is one of the best replies I have ever seen in any forum, any category.
Best/Tommy