Sorry, Edward. Forgot about Excalibur!

Hey Jeff
I found a way to successfully finish my project without taking the MB effects out.
I found out I can successfully render short pieces - the PC froze only when I tried 50-100 minutes.
So I divided the project into 5-10 minute pieces. They take about 25 minutes to render. I am rendering them into AVI uncompressed.
When its all done (this will take a while), I will join all AVI into a new project - and there I have my film. When I render again, my PC won't have to deal with MB anymore.
Its working fine!
what do you think?

Wow, looks like you found a solution....keep us posted so we know how it's going!