I am new to this forum but wanted to share some information with all the people having trouble with freezes/hangs when rendering.
I too had issues with both pd8 and pd9/64. I have 2 computers with pd9/64 on them. One is an amd 640/6gddr2, the other is a E6550/4gddr2. Both running W7. I use onboard graphics on the amd and had a basic pcie card in the other. Neither would render anything but mpeg 2 hq. I fiddled with settings for some time before deciding to buy a new card. I installed a GTS450 on the E6550 and configured it to handle everything. Now I can render in any format I choose without any freezes. I just completed a 400 slide project and used just about every effect in the menus.
In the forums I noticed many people using machines that are simply too old and outdated to give them what they want. Remember though, pay attention to what you buy. There are many "new" computers out there that will not do the job. Stay away from the bundles and bib box store bargains. Most of those machines have inferior motherboards and no room for expansion. Audio and video are the biggest challenges for computers. I don't care how great the software programmers are (Cyberlink, Adobe, etc), they cannot polish a turd.