How do I stop my Maya 2008 from crashing with my PC specs?

hi, not really sure what to offer,
Any software with intense graphics work requires lots of space if it is set to constant saving,but this can also cause problems if you dont defrag,
 it is recomended to to save to a slaved hard drive and to shift the page file to the secondary drive .
for this reason
NOTE>>Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
here's the recomended
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13583877
Maya (supposedly) is really set up for Mac Windows
Refs to>>My PC specs are Pentium Core II duo 2.2 GHz,
4 GB memory, total of 820 GB and an NVIDIA 9400 graphics card (512 MB
1000 wt power help's to push it
Is this Windows Vista Windows 7 X64 bit? or 32 bit?>> 4 gig of ram?
It's just that windows 32 bit can only support 3 gig including the video card..

Thanks for replying. Does the 200GB refer to the total size of the hard disks or the size of the slaved hard disk I should save on? Right now, I have page files on all 4 of my HDDs set to a minimum of 10GB each .
To answer your question, it is Windows Vista 32 bit.
When you say 'shift the pagefile to the secondary drive, do you mean I should set the one on the main drive to 0Mb?

(I checked the link. I would like to point out that I am using MAYA 2008 just in case it might make any difference)

Does the 200GB refer to the total size of the hard disks or the size of the slaved hard disk I should save on?
To cover all basis you should definately use 300 gig hard drive slaved or not but use the dedicated drive for Maya since the recomended is 200 gig you want room to spare.
Sorry dont know for Vista
In Control Panel, double-click System.
Click Virtual Memory.
Set the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum size values to 0 (zero), and then click Set.
Select the new drive that you want to use to store the paging file.
Set Initial Size (MB) and Maximum size.
 For the initial size, Microsoft recommends using the recommended value in the Total Page File Size for All Drives box.
Click Set, and then click OK twice.
Click Restart Now.

It seems to have improved a little bit but it is still crashing unfortunately.

Do you think it might have anything to do with having the texture files on a different drive?

Loudninja take a look at your events errors may help to pin down the culprit.
Lockups can be caused by numerous things.
Have  you defragged your C drive?

Yes, I have done that a couple of times. How do I look at the events errors?

Which windows?
In XP go to control panel administrative tools Event Viewer >applications
In Windows 7. Control Panel\All Control Panel Items>Administrative Tools>Event viewer>windows logs< on the left Expand it to Applications
or Applications and Services Logs on the left expand it>Hardware Events
I haven't used Vista but maybe similar to windows 7

Here's what I got from the log of the last crash. (It was under Windows logs > Applications). Hope it helps

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          17/04/2010 04:52:57
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Flex
Description:
Faulting application maya.exe, version 2007.8.2.2245, time stamp 0x46b2ff70, faulting module RAViX.dll, version 4.0.0.218, time stamp 0x44a04f12, exception code 0x40000015, fault offset 0x0005817b, process id 0x8d8, application start time 0x01cadddf57194e04.

There you go that helps.
Try a virus check just incase hijackthis,
http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html
post your log here
http://www.hijackthis.de/
This what I sourced, could be the hard drive, coudl be the a few different things
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-554688.html

I have run the 'hijackthis' application and it did not come up with any errors. I tried the maya on my windows 7 OS on one of the other HDDs but it did not solve the problem. I have exported some parts of the animation to make the load a little lighter while I progress. So far, it looks like that's my only option left. What do you think?

Sorry for acting like such a noob but I'm going to need a few directions on how to get there. What exactly is it supposed to do, if I may ask?

Lol!! No biggie!

Hey, I think it worked!! It has only 'stopped responding' once so far!! I can't begin to thank you enough!! Thanks a million, Merete!!!

Please disregard the hyperlink in the 'accepted solution'. The correct link to the Maya forum (where details can be found) is in the assisted solution.

:) cool!!!
 I'm happy for you Thanks..
Have a Great Day
Merete