Death animations keep crashing

I have read alot of the other threads in the forum about the death animations crashing but i still am not sure on how to slove the problem.. i'm using max 6..all the animations that i have created like the root,run back etc. work all perfectly fine. is it possible for anyone to tell me where can i put the nodes for ski0,ski1 and ski2 on my model or would i need anything else for the death animation to work? and btw i'm using my own skeleton and not using the biped model.