Hi Axel,
Thanks for your suggestions, I just tried cleaning out the media cache and also rendered out a wav file of the audio and placed it in the timeline and deleted the mp3 version.. Tried once again to encode an mpeg2-dvd file.
1st attempt encoding through Media Encoder, pal widescreen with variable bit rate set to 6, 7 and 8 = everything froze, had to restart via button.
2nd attempt encoding through Media Encoder = this time tried video only same settings just no audio = same error (Adobe Media Encoder cs6.0 has stopped working...)
3rd attempt encoding through Premiere Pro, same settings with audio = same error message.
4th attempt encoding through Media Encoder, pal wide preset as standard with no change = same error message.
5th attempt encoding through Media Encoder, h264 preset for vimeo, 720p = same error message.
6th attempt encoding through Media Encoder, AVI (Uncompressed) 720 x 480 preset. 1m40s in the dreaded blue screen appeared. "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval. " Bla bla bla.
In all instances the encoding is absolutely flying, but always ends up crashing.