[Mark Pearson]

I did what you told me and it worked, it was the trashing preferences that did the trick for me. Thanks!

(for future users who come across this thread)
In terms of your questions:

crash – error message telling me to go to Adobe troubleshooting forum and then forces a new save file (probably to protect me???)

timeline Every time and any file that gets dragged in results in error message

Every Project? No. Just the one I described. I tried another one that also had a lot of pre-rendered flares, but no errors. odd.

recent changes? Yes. I was running a 30 day trial of Windows 7 64 bit, it ran out which cause my screen saver to go blank. I purchased a license registered it, and now its back to normal (windows that is)

other details? I was watching on half resolution and RAM previewing on half. I have a brand new machine and I have not installed any codecs yet.

Other? I can’t think of anything else other than I had changed (a while ago) some of the secret preferences in order to get a faster render, I had read it in a forum somewhere.

I was also on multiprocessing and openGl (4gb to others, 8 to Adobe products) 2 GB per core using 4 cores.

[Mark Pearson]

Yeah there are tons of effects.
its effect heavy. Should I assume that it will take a couple of hours then?