Retaining all players - how many do you load?

I'm just running a few experiments to see what my PC can handle. I'm also a complete sucker for detail, so this as an essential part of the FM experience.

It's an old PC but I've suped it up with significant extra RAM and retained all players from every continent (and used the African mega pack). The total retained is 301,000 players (the max recommended is 125,000 players).

I've tried two games now and whilst it manages to process the first season absolutely fine, the game receives a crash dump error on 24/06/2011 in both instances. In between this though, the game runs quite quickly (on average, 10 minutes to complete a week) and there is absolutely no hang or lagging.

Further to this, I have used FMRTE recall players out on loan and change the kit colours.

I was wondering whether the size of the database is the reason for crash dump, or whether it might be something else (playing around in FMRTE?), conflicting data files/xml files? Any ideas?

I've never had this problem before on previous versions retaining 295,000 players on 3GB RAM laptop, so I'm wondering whether it really does have anything to do with my desktop PC being unable to handle it (as above, no lag, runs quickly and smoothly comparatively to the DB size on 6GB RAM, dual core processors).