For those of you - like me - who suddenly find themselves getting the "insufficient disk space" error (but have tons of disk, large pagefiles, etc) I found one thing that worked for me - but which I have not seen posted here before. In the POSER4 directory, I had dozens of temp files - which appeared to be from renders which died for various other reasons and were never deleted. Deleting these files eliminated the problem. This was after trying everything else - including defragmenting the drive (I have Poser on it's own 120 GB drive). Let me rant now... I depend heavilly on Poser 4 - I have nothing but praise for this incredible tool. I have had nothing but problems with P5 and don't need ProPack (although I own both of them). I know a lot of people in the same boat. I've been a user for 3 years or so and use the program every day for work and personal projects. I sure with CL would do something to fix the memory leak problem in P4. As great as Poser is - I have never, never seen a more unreliable program. I mean, this application can die while sitting at the user interface - and doing nothing. Any chance of a new service pack coming? And I say this with the utmost respect for the application and what it can do! Thanks all, I can stop ranting now!

I get those very annoying temp files when rendering with shadows - quit doing that and now don't get that problem. It happens with p4/ppp/p5 for me on an xp using shadowlites from some of the lighting packages that I have bought. However, when just using lights and no shadowlites - havent found any temp files. It is irratating as you are correct - harddisk management doesn't stop the problem - you must manually delete them. Perhaps what cl has done is to try to reuse these temp files they created rather than ignoring or writing over them?

If these files have .tmp file extensions you should be able to eliminate them automatically when you run disk cleanup. Just make sure that you have the right boxes checked under options.

So where are these temp files at in the Poser dir.?

I found them.....

In all my years of using Poser 4 and P4/ProPack I have never seen any temp files. Weird.

Strange, I've heard of these tmp files before too but have never found any in my directory. I have had renders die, BOY have I had renders die! (P4.0~4.03 and now P5) ????

For a real eye-opener, do a search for .tmp. Those little critters hide out all over the place. Icq is really bad about .tmp files.

For those who are not real familiar with the temp file problem: Try this. Boot up. The the 1st thing you do is START-SEARCH (files and folders). In the search box type this in just as you see it here. ~., *.tmp This will search for hidden windows temp files as well as all other temporary files. Deleate ALL of these temp files. Reboot. [I don't take credit for this tip...it was posted at the Poser newsgroup alt.binaries.3d.poser sometime ago.]

You can look for two folders: C:Windowstemp C:temp That should cover the majority of your temp files.

I know about those, I've just never seen Poser leave any droppings in its folder.

My experience is like Spit's I've been using P4 for years and never seen it create any temp files - other applications, yes, Poser, no. I sometimes use the Cacheman app that CL recommends to free up memory.

The temp files generated while rendering, (with names like: "poserTemp.-1152986521") contain the shadowmap info and are normally deleted, automatically, at the competition of the render. If you lock-up & crash out of Poser during a render they may not be automatically deleted, even at the end of the next successfully completed render (P4), so must be removed manually. You guys that have never seen them are lucky, but you can catch a glimpse of them by viewing the contents of Poser's root directory during a render with shadows. Unfortunately, keeping these deleted has not stopped Poser's memory problem for me. ...but, then, none of the zillions of suggested remedies has ever proved to be a consistant solution. (Its sunspots man, I tell you its sunspots.)

Poser is naughty with temp files, it doesn't put them in the temp directory which may be why some people haven't seen them, you are looking in the wrong place. Follow the tip posted by Mondaxjake and let us know how many you find.

Well, hmmm, I don't think I've ever locked up and crashed during a Poser 4 or Poser ProPack render in all these years. That would explain why I've never found any.

I lock up on occasion. Poser may be cleaning up any leftovers. At any rate, I'm not going to complain.

So that's what those things are!? I'm always hesitant to delete anything Poser-ish, in fear of triggering a full-blown Poser tantrum, but I am going to get rid of these right now. Been meaning to ask what the heck they were for months now, so thanks for the info :)

Here's another hint if you get the "insufficient disk space" error: Exit Poser completely. This eror means that you've overloaded Poser's internal memory with textur maps, shadow maps, and so on. Restart Poser. Re-open the scene. Hit Render. Do not adjust any settings (except if you need to change the size of the final render) and don't load anything else into the scene. Since Poser's memory is now clear, it should render the scene without the error message.

I seem to remember reading somewhere about a problem with using P4 on a seperate partition, you had to create a page fale of a certian size on that parttion too, or get insufficient disk space errors, could be wrong, but check the tech FAQ's at CL later jb

I have P4 on a separate partition and haven't done anything special with my swap file. No problems for me under Win98 or XP.

The "Insufficient Disk space" error message is related to the Windows Swap file, and ordinarily only occurs with Windows 2000 & Windows XP. If Poser is on a disk of its own, you won't often get the "Insufficient Disk Space" message. When you do, it's time to defrag. The "Out of Memory" error is a "blanket" error message from Poser because Poser lacks the vocabulary of many other programs. Most often that is encountered after you receive messages stating a geometry file is missing.

Hey thanks for the comments and additional ideas! A followup... I ran into the problem again - after deleting the temp files (which cleared things up), and then defragging the POSER disk (it is installed on it's own 120 GB disk). So I then tried the "CLEAR SWAPFILE" idea (setting it to a low number, rebooting, setting it high and then rebooting). And the problem initally was still there - and then went away. Very frustrating. I would pay $$$ for a solid P4 and PP. Of course the other problem is the way the UI just dies from time to time - for example when you are in RENDER/MATERIALS and click something too many times and there are suddenly 2-3 file menus open, etc.... Anyway, the frustration is worth it, IMHO. Lou