bind 8.4.1 under windows stopping without warning

[ree at thunderstar.net]

I am wondering if anyone can shed some light on something I recently ran
into with a windows server running bind 8.4.1 (same behavior also noted on
8.3.4).

The exact scenario is a server that is secondary for a few thousand zones.
When a few hundred of these were removed from the server, resulting in
numerous attempts by the secondary to transfer those zones, which, of
course, errored out since the primary was no longer authoritative, bind on
the secondary would stop suddenly several times per day.

I was in the midst of removing a bunch of zones but I didn't do the
secondary at the same time as the primary. As soon as the primary had
those same zones removed, no more sudden stops.

The server is running NT4.

Obviously, one shouldn't have many zones in a secondary for which the
primary is not authoritative, however, bind shouldn't stop due to this
either.

TIA