Media encoder time remaining stops decreasing and processor drops to zero. Time elapsed keeps going up! File won't complete!

Question

Please help anyone who can.
Firstly I know I have very little RAM on my system, only 4GB but I've been rendering the same kinds of files for weeks with no problems until the last few days.
They biggest issues is as follows:
My timeline in Premiere Pro CC 2014 has 1080p 50mbps MXF footage from a Sony PMW 200 and some similar footage replaced with an After Effects comp for green screen keying.
The clip, approx 2min, starts with a linked comp from after effects, then cuts to the mxf footage and back to a linked comp at the end.
I am exporting via media encoder to h264 1080p. The file rendered fine for about 40min with the processor at 50% approx. The processor then shot up to 99% for 10 mins and the render progress bar
went up to almost 90% complete.
Then the progress bar stopped, the processor dropped to 0%, time remaining is steadily climbing and so is time elapsed. I've tried pausing and un pausing the render que and nothing else is running in background.
I need these files rendered tonight!! I've tried this a few times and this problem keeps occurring sometimes with the remaining time shooting up to 74 hours!!
Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?!
Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
Dell Precision workstation 690
Intel xeon X5365 3ghz (x2)
4 GB RAM

Answer 1

Sounds exactly like what is happening to me.  This is frustrating because it was a 30 hour encoding process and the place where it is stuck is right at the very end of the sequence on the 2nd pass, although there is still about 12% of the progress bar remaining.  I guess that this is where it takes all its work and puts the separate files into the single video file. I really don't want to go through this again. The final video file is showing up though and is shown having the size that I am expecting it to be.
Any workarounds to somehow get this unstuck?  I am hesitant to just try and open the file. I am going to try a couple of things and if I am successful at getting this to finish without restarting then I will be sure to post it here.
Also, I don't know if this has anything to do with this problem, but I looked at my system Activity Monitor, and there is a CPU process highlighted in red, it states:
     Adobe QT32 Server (not responding)
Thirty minutes later...
I was incorrect above as to the actual problem.  I paused the queue encoding that was stuck, then opened up the project again in Premiere Pro only to discover that there was an offline still image which I stupidly had renamed during the day. So I renamed the file back to its original name, reconnected the picture, saved the PP project. Then I started the encoding back up and still no luck.
So I paused the encoding again, went back into the PP project and rendered just the area under question, saved it, and exported it into the queue. Then just to be safe I went to the paused item in AME, and duplicated it adding another version into the queue.
Then I unpaused the encoding and ... SUCCESS!!  Not sure which of the final steps did the trick, but I am guessing that it was the rendering of the part of the sequence that it was stuck on.  Hope this helps someone.