Hi all. Just discovered the priority setting when I'm rendering. But I don't grasp this: every time I launch Bryce anew, the priority is set back to "low". There's a way to set the priority permanently to a higher level, or it's something that I have to do each time? Thanx in advance, Stefano

I don't know but i do want to! I will be moving to XP in about 1 month's time. bookmark!

You have to set it each time Stefano otherwise your computer wouldn't work with any other app if Bryce had high priority all the time. A pain I know but it does help reduce those render times. Catlin

Is there a way to reduce render times with Windows ME? I'm sure i'd find it myself, but i've never gone through all the options and menus.

I think a little util called Process Explorer might also allow changing process priority. I haven't messed with it in a good while, so I can't be 100% certain. You should be able to locate the program by typing in the name in a search engine. This program is also very handy when it comes to seeing what exactly is running on the computer at a given time. Thus it helps in finding spyware and unnecessary startup items (a.k.a. resource hogs.)

AdAware is great for finding that damn spyware too.

you set anything to a higher priority in winXP, chances increase for it crashing. forget about it, it's not going to make the rendering process any faster.

Drac I give Bryce high priority every time I'm rendering and it hasn't crashed once (I'm touching wood at the moment just in case). Then again, when I'm rendering there is nothing else running, so maybe if there was that could cause problems. I'm using XP Pro but I think XP Home is a bit more glitchy. Catlin

Thanks for all your answers. By the way, am I the only one here who never experienced a single serious crash with Windows? I had 98SE, now I'm running XP home, and they run smoothly and without problems at all. I write all day and run Bryce in the background. With priority set to "real time" Word becomes a little awkward, but that's all. Then, I have to admit that so far I haven't seen so much improvement in rendertimes. Have to do a test. Thanx again. Stefano

you never experienced a crash with windows???? o_0 LMAO... someone erect a shrine for this man, he's conquered the blue screen of death where not even Bill Gates has! ;) seriously, either you have a rock-stable computer or you're the luckyest person i know. anyway, i disagree with the high priority issue. i don't think that increases speed any bit -because bryce rendering is processor-based and the priority thing seems to affect RAM -talking out of my ass because I really don't know but it's been my experience. Generally programs that run at high priority, unless you have a stable system may crash. if you put bryce at high priority while rendering, all it does is give more ram to the job which doesn't really change its processor power use. but meh... next render i'll try it out, i don't think it's going to change anything. mihnea

I have never had windows itself crash (W98SE). I have had individual programs hang (Bryce/PhotoPaint) but that has usually when I have been pushing things a bit, I must admit.

Can I have some choice in the shrine design? :-) S.

I didn't say I'd never had a crash with Windows, when using Win98 it was a crash a minute but XP is much more stable and I do have a very stable system. I've been using computers long enough to be very wary of what I install so as not to have any conflicting software. The priority thingy in the task manager actually tells the CPU which programs get to use the resources of the CPU so it does make render times slightly less, it has nothing to do with the ram. The only time I get a crash whilst using Bryce is when I've been making lots of changes in the DTE and Scott Tucker told me that this is a known bug in Bryce that has been there since beta days and never got fixed, so still no Windows crashes in connection with Bryce. Catlin