MF6 crashing repeatedly, please help

[aligillon]

I have just purchased a brand new laptop, very few programmes have been installed on it to date. I am very happy with it, it appears to work better than any pc i have owned before. However, i have installed the free MF6 trial version from the Coral website. It worked fine for the first 3 or 4 days, however, over the past few days it is continually crashing, sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes after 20 or 30 minutes. My laptop's spec is below:

Asus M51 Series
CPU: Intel Duo T5850 2.1 GHz
RAM: 3GB
G.Card: ATI Radeon HD 3470
HD: 320 GB
Windows Vista Premium

Sure'ly its powerful enough to run MF6? Assuming so, then why does the programme keep on crashing? When it crashes, the programme immeaditaly fades to a light colour and locks up. Windows gives me the following information:

Please note, my operating system is a Polish version of Vista so my translations may not be exact!

Problem: APPCRASH
Application: DVDMF.dat
Version: 6.0.0.0
Signatutre Time: 45d2bd19
Error Name: StackHash_a78e
Error Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Error Signature Time: 4791a7a6
Code: c0000374
?????: 000b015d
Version Operating System: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Indicator: 1045

Can anyone make any light of the above? Any help would be appreciated with helping to reslove the issue asap. I would like to purchase the full version but would be foolish to do so if i cannot get the trial to run properly.

Regards
Ali

[DVDDoug]

What video file formats are you working with? (If they are "AVI" files, we need to know the actual compression format, because AVI is a "container" format, and it can contain anything from DV to DivX.)

Most of my crashes have had something to do with the video file. Usually I don't know what the problem is, but some video files crash the Corel programs and other files are OK. The file may have some slight corruption, or it may be incompatible with Movie Factory. (There are many variations of every format.) And, usually these "bad" files will play fine in Windows Media Player.

The more compressed formats (MPEG-4, DivX, WMV, etc.) cause the most trouble. MPEG-2 sometimes causes trouble. The best format for editing or for converting to other formats is AVI/DV (13GB per hour from a MiniDV camera).

[sjj1805]

I have just purchased a brand new laptop, very few programmes have been installed on it to date. .......

You may be surprised to find that "new computers" are supplied with loads of "crapware" - trial versions of this that and the other - mostly stuff that is old, out of date and you don't want/need. You also get enticed into 30 or 60 day "free trials" of this that and the other to try and get you hooked - then you feel like you MUST have it and end up parting with more money.

Popular examples of stuff shipped with a new Vista computer include a 60 trial of Microsoft Office and also Norton anti-Virus.
What I did was to make a back up copy of my Vista Activation
There are several methods available - the one I used was quite simple
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228
Then look for the download of ABR.ZIP - to cut his very long article short, you back up your activation using the small zip file, wipe your computer clean - re-install a clean copy of Vista - he cites various possible places such as a disc that comes with your computer. In my case I had purchased a disc for one of my desktops. Then you restore your activation with the ABR.ZIP file.

Note: It only works on THAT computer and with THAT same version of VISTA - it is NOT a means of creating extra pirated copies - simply will not work!

You then have a nice clean copy of Vista without all the crapware the manufacturer installed without asking.

Further recommendations:
Back up your drivers before attempting a clean re-installation - again plenty of programs available to do that - just Google.

For piece of mind make a disc image of your existing installation such as with Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image so you can revert back again if needed.

[zforray]

I had a similar problem and discovered it to be a missing codec. The video supplied to me used the AC3 codec (Apple?) and while I could add it to the project, once I tried to render, it would crash.

If you can add it to your project, try doing a "right-click" on the video and check the properties for things missing.