Ok.....I'm breathing easier now :) The defrag and cleanup was done....I do a cleanup once a week and a defrag about every two weeks. I went back in after posting, determined to fix it or kill it! What I discovered is that the hourglass thing can be eliminated my simply "clicking" on the image. It's sort of a nusiance (must be a thing with the mouse...hopefully they'll get that on their next patch!). After a bit of playing, I can get this thing to run nearly as fast as the little demo I'd become so use to :) I can load Judy and Don(think that's their names), cloth them, put dynamic hair on them,render them and then load and render a cat in under 5 minutes.....that works for me!:) I think before I do much of anything, I'm going to spend some time reading the book! This is a whole different animal than that P4ProPack demo! :) Thanks for your patience Dave-So......you could obviously hear the "panic" in my typing!! :)