PCG and Windows error - how I fixed

Question

I'll make this post in the hope it might help others.
I was a sufferer of, and an early contributor to, one of the long running PCG error threads.
After several years of successful Premier/Encore authoring with a successful workflow I suffered the dreaded PCG error not long after upgrading to Encore CS3. After a lot of trial and error and help from these forums I finally solved the issue by getting brand new hardware and installing Adobe Premier/AE/Encore/Audition and nothing else on the box. Same workflow and assets, no problems. This rather suggested to me it's not Encore itself that's the problem, nor necessarily the workflow or the assets, but more that some complex interaction within Windows somewhere was responsible. In my case I had a project with 5 timelines, each on a menu, and each timeline had it's PCG solved (before I switched hardware) by a different combination of the 'fixes' suggested here.
On the new hardware same assets/project/workflow - no issues.
At the weekend I was happily knocking out a quick slideshow of a wedding I shot recently when Encore failed at the Create Disc stage with a 'Encore has encountered an error and neads to close' message. Not only did my current project fail, but one that was working a few weeks ago failed also. This strongly suggested it wasn't an asset/workflow issue.
On investigating further I realised that I'd broken my own rules about being rigerous and not installing anything other than Adobe on my PC. As part of sorting out my monitor profiling (specifically the ability to profile each monitor in a dual setup independantly) I'd downloaded and installed a Microsoft 'Colour' feature. It installed itself but also the .NET framework as well as +C++ runtime environment.
I uninstalled all three items and Encore sprang back into life building and burning both the older project as well as my new one.
All of this confirms to me that the problem that Encore presents with is caused by a pretty fundamental interaction somewhere in the bowels of Windows and that whilst the actions of fiddling with settings or assets or any of the other 'fixes' that work for some people some of the time are not really addressing the fundamental problem.
My advice would be to install Adobe video products on a fresh install of Windows and run them and nothing else. Observe 'profession IT' standards of configuration management and things should be OK.
It's not how we maybe envisage running a PC but the hard practicalities of our complex friend make it so.
Hope this helps someone else.
Regards
Pete

Answer 1

Wow.
It's probably deeper than that. I have both the .NET framework and the latest C++ runtime installation from Microsoft, and I cannot reproduce this error even if I handle my assets badly.
Rodger Ling may be correct. This may be some deep hardware/software conflict that only appears on certain hardware configurations when certain other software is involved.
Unfortunately, that would make it nearly impossible to track down the bug and squash it without some serious user input on *complete* hardware and software configurations.
Thanks for posting your fix; likely it will help someone else who runs into this issue.
-Jeff