that is pretty much the reason i do not want to re-install. i have a lot of imported models and textures that would be a pain in the butt to go through all that again. my system specs are, p4 2.53ghz @ 2.80ghz with 512megs of high performance ddr pc2100 and a radeon 9700 pro. so i would hope that is not the problem, but you never know. you are correct though, it usually only happens during the more complicated scenes when movement of objects starts to get slow and unresponcive. hey i could always use this as an excuse to upgrade;). thanks fot the tip rayraz, i would not have thought to back that stuff up, in my frustration i would have just kicked it all to the curb and started over! oh, one thing that did help was setting bryce to launch in it's default state. so far i have not run into that problem since switching that setting. thanks again!