Could someone explain to me why it is that I have 512 MB of Ram, and yet if I try to render a high rez texture, my Poser freezes up. I have to shrink all my high rez textures down before I can use them, and this really bugs me.... I run Windows 98, if that makes any difference? All help appreciated :-)

Poser and 98 aren't best buddies. Some of it is due to 98's horrible memory management. Other factors may be the amount of HD space you have left, and how much virtual RAM you have allocated. Best thing to do with a render in 98 is to start from a clean boot, with no other applications open.

Win98 does make a difference. It doesn't address memory nearly as well as Win2K or XP. Might be time to consider an upgrade. * says the dragon with a copy of XP still sitting on his shelf, uninstalled, because he hasn't worked up the courage to truly screw up his machine yet *

Because of MS and their limit on how much RAM win98 uses. Win98 doesn't 'really' see any more than 96mb or physical ram (I can't remember the real number I'm sure someone will correct me). If you want to use more ram then you need to use NT, Win2k, or XP. Boils down to "reason is becuase of MS" only run poser, get the poser memory app from the CL site, close down all resources other than poser and you will get a bit more performance, but, upgrading your OS will take advantage of the RAM you have and you will get better performance.

When you start your computer Windows takes a good chunk of RAM to operate, and opening POSER takes another good bite from that 512 MB chip, what I recommend you do is to boost your Virtual memory cache according to the size of your hardrive, ( I think the maximum you can kick it up to is 4090 MB and th Minimum is 3MB) you can do this by going into your system settings.

Many good suggestions here. Since I can't afford to upgrade right now, one good question would be how to start with a clean boot and no other applications running?

I will personally recommend XP :) XP pro is what I have. It really works well :) I love the stuff that ernyoka1 makes. Its the most bizarre stuff. Rotten apple cores, half eaten fish bodies. Just thought I would mention it for absolutely no reason at all :)

Look in your startup folder found and take those out or move them so you can manually load them when you want or need them. turn off anti virii applications when you are not connected to the web, or when you are just running poser, these programs tend to be resource hogs. look in your task bar on the right lower side of the screen. usually if you right click on these icons you can "exit" or turn off these functions while your running poser, this will free up some resources. under your system check to make sure that your HDs are set to "network" setting, this will handle files faster and more efficently. set your virtual memory to a FIXED size. usually recommendations are 2-3 times your physical memory. this will allow windows to find stuff in your swap file quickly and in a more fixed way. defrag your hd, clear out your /temp directory. your /temp directory gets guncked with junk and windows looks through these files all the time when searching for files, this will give you a little more boost when accessing files. when I clean out peoples computers I always clear out all the /windows tmp files, screensavers that aren't being used, wallpapers, text file documents that are in the windows directory (do you really need to know some of this stuff?). generally things like Musicmatch jukebox, norton and mcafee, sound manager software applications, MS Works or Office quick start items, all of these take resources and ram and can be used for Poser. don't run programs in the background, or any other programs other than Poser and see if your performance gets better with poser. you know how you work, see if there is anything you can not be doing and give poser that little extra that you need. download the Curious Labs memory application to see if you can get more resources for poser to use. Found off the CL site under Support, then Utilities, then Windows Utilities, then "Chacheman - Outer Technologies" link. best thing to do would be to upgrade to XP Home or Pro. I was a win98 Poser 5 user and quickly found that I just couldn't live with it anymore, upgraded to XP Home and not only poser but all my programs benifighted from the upgrade. If you can't upgrade, do the best you can with what you have. I hope some of these tips can help and get you a little better performance with Poser. good luck.

Hehehe SothArtist :o)