how are those 2 firewire drives connected?

Can  you try something for us? If you capture to your internal drive, do you get the same error?

 the firewire drives are conected via firewire cables

The fault ocurs from internal and external media!

My previous versions of avid on same machine have run fine ..its only when i upgraded to 5.8 the fault occured!

Andy

Strange, indeed. So many variables in any systems that this could take time to troubleshoot (last troubleshoot suggestion, create a new user in Avid and see if that helps).

Only recommedations I can see at this point to get you back editing are:

1) Try 5.8.3, now available from the Download Center;

2) Revert back to 5.7 until such time you need the functions on a higher version.

 It is strange indead...I did wonder if it was the video cards compatability with that version?

that hass happened before?

Who knows ..im going back to 5.7 until some can help me with the 5.8 bug

Thanks for trying though

Andy