AE CS3/Keylight crashes, sometimes seriously...

Question

HELP! I've been rendering some reasonably complex keyed footage with animated backgrounds etc from AE CS3 on Windows XP quad processor box.
All was well until a couple of days ago when renders started crashing whilst rendering the Keylight effect. On checking The Foundry's website I could see there was an update (v1.2.8), so loaded that in. Still had crashes. Then had one severe crash where footage files got deleted. Honestly! I'd narrowed the work area slider down to the specific bit of the comp that was crashing and after the crash, footage that was in the comp, but outside the work area, got deleted. Crashes should never, ever cause footage files to be deleted - I can't even think how this would be possible. I would blame myself but the specific files in question (7 in total) are all c.1Gb each and in a folder with other footage that was untouched, so I would have to be selective and wait while they were deleted. There is nothing in the Recycle Bin.
Some parts of comps render with Keylight quite happily.
Between each crash I reboot and delete any partial output that has been created. Is there anything else that needs to be "cleared" to make the subsequent renders error free? Are there any "optimum" settings for memory/cache, disk space, etc that can help this along?
Thanks,
J

Answer 1

1.) close AE and try trashing AE preference file (save a backup copy or just rename .txt extension to .old) try then opening your project.
2.) make a copy of your project file. try opening it.
3.) open a new project, go preferences >> Memory & Cache >> then lower Maximum RAM Cache size to 45% and enable disk cache with size of 20.000 or higher, now try opening your project youre working on.