Just did an install of win XP onto a reformatted C drive. Poser for me exists on it's own 80gb drive - about 50gb's of which is taken by data files for Poser. I reinstalled the Poser application, but whenever I start to work with Victoria the sytem will hang and I have to recycle power on the machine. Prior to installing Win XP I had some major hardware issues - had to replace the motherboard, CPU, Ram, and Video Board... During that whole process the drive Power rests on got hit by 'scandisk' with all sorts of data missing errors... So... Has anyone ever seen XP-Pro hang when running Power 4-pro? I'm wondering if I should look to XP, my Power Application, or my data files... But if the data files where corrupt, could that hang the entire operating system? The idea of restoring 50gb's worth of data from my CD archives definately does -NOT- appeal to me, I'm not exactly sure how complete that archive is...

Previously I was Win ME. New hardware puts me at: ASUS A7V8X AMD 2200+ (1800 Mhz) 512MB Ram nVidia geForce 440MX-SE

Have you update Poser 4 to 4.03? There's also an 4.03 memory updater at CuriousLabs JV

I have been using Poser and PPP with XP since the day XP came out and have had no problems.

I'll concur with ziggie. I have both Poser PPP and Poser 5 on XP Pro and they run without incident. So, I'd look to something other than the OS for the problem. Could be bad memory, Power application, a bad Poser install, corrupt Poser data files. You'll have to backtrack and see if other applications, when pushed, show signs of stuttering or freezing. Make sure that your power supply is rated for the new mobo/cpu. 350W or better in most cases these days (400/450W should handle most situations). If you haven't, get and install SP1 for XP. Right now, Outlook 2002 occasionally freezes XP Pro for me. Nothing to do with the OS or hardware; most likely one of the (unremovable) patches. Might I also suggest another form of archival media. DVD-R is far superior in storage capacity at greater than 6x's a CD-R's, or you can invest in a large-capacity tape backup device and media. 50GB is just too much for CD-R - what's that, like, 70+ CDs? (Yikes!) Kuroyume

Here's the install path I followed: installed Poser 4 installed 4.03 installed 4 memory updater installed pro pack installed pro pack service release 3 installed pro pack memory updater Turn off machine, then turn it back on a few minutes later Load up the application load up vicky put some clothes on her Machine freezes up as I'm moving the mouse across the screen... Forcing me to cycle power.

I've installed every windows update microsoft had for XP.

I had problems with pro pack service release 3, so I uninstalled it. Now I have no problems. My machine: AMD XP 2800+ 1 MB DDR400 nVidia nForce board on board nVidea GeForce4 MX video Windows 2000 pro Poser 5 runs okay, Poser 4 propack runs okay I am making an image with 2 vicky3's, 2 vicky2's and 1 stephanie in propack No hang ups yet, knock on wood... JV

Wish I could find service release 2. I've got 1 on one of those archive CDs, but not 2. My C drive is formated NTFS. Didn't reformat the drive that has Poser, it's still FAT32... I've started the drive scan, given that it's an 80gb drive, that will take a while. Good thing I have this laptop. :)

Search the archives for messages about Windows XP. Checking the hard disk surface for errors is a good move. You also might think about defragging the Poser hard disk. Also, you have the option of running a program under a different version of Windows. I would use the program compatibility feature to run it under your old version of Windows. If it runs under that but not under Windows XP, then it is XP problem. If it doesn't run under either Windows program, it is probably a hardware issue. Sometimes when people switch from one version of Windows to another and keep old hardware, they neglect to update their device drivers. In this case, it sounds like you got all new hardware (except the Poser drive). (There was one error message in the archive about a size limitation under FAT32 but it didn't seem to apply.) Does the Poser hard drive run on the same disk controller as the C: drive? If it runs on its own controller card(like with SCSI), you might need to update the device driver for that card.

You don't need the memory updater and I think it's recommended that you do NOT install the patches for Poser 4 before you update it to Propack. I'm on XP with 512 megs of ram and here's what I did and everything runs flawlessly. Install Poser 4 Install Poser propack Install ProPack service release 3 As I remember I rebooted between each. And I probably opened Poser 4 to enter my serial number before I updated to ProPack.

Spit: That's how I tried it the first time, and it gave me this problem. Then I tried the more in depth approach, to the same problem.

I agree with spurlock5 on this. Do a thorough scandisk on your hard drives (esp. the drive containing all of the Poser data) and then perform a defrag afterwards. The option to run Poser PP in compability mode seems a little too much. Shouldn't be needed since it runs fine on XP for just about everyone else (i.e.: it's not a compability issue). I'd suggest, if you can, converting the FAT32 to NTFS. NTFS is leaps and bounds better than FAT32. I use nothing else but. Also, check your virtual memory settings. Shouldn't be more than 2GB (initial) 4GB (max), otherwise Poser throws a tantrum. Kuroyume

I had tremendous problems with Maya and other heavy-duty programs using XP, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Whenever there was a tremendous load on the system Win XP shut down. It turned out that there was nothing wrong with either Win XP or the programs, but rather flaky RAM. RAM can apparently function even if it is broken, and since there was just "slight flakiness" in my 1 GB of RAM most of the time the system wouldn't use the bad portion. However, when I started Maya or something it would, and sent XP down.

Just tried an install that had no service packs, only poser 4 4.03 pro pack Did a full scandisk before this. Loaded it up and it froze my OS right away... I don't have the option of converting FAT32 to NTFS unless I go out and buy a new hard drive to put all this data on...

It works fine on FAT32. It really does sound like a hardware thing..but Poser isn't grabbing all your memory just by opening it. The first thing it does is scan through your textures and look through everything. Did it even do that? Oh, wait. Are you on a network? Poser does want to go out and check for other running copies. I don't know what happens if you've a network and it is blocked.

I think the only way to convert the file system is to reformat the hard disk which is a little drastic. You can change in and out of compatibility mode. Windows XP has a task manager that allows you to track system performance while Poser is running. You can track physical and virtual memory usage, cpu usage, After you have Poser open with the task manager in the foreground, you can load Vickie and see what that does to memory usage. With 512 megabytes, your system should be able to handle Vickie easily. You load Poser and then press Control, alternate and delete once. There are different panels including one for performance. With Poser loaded, check the memory usage against the limits; then do the same after you load Victoria. You can also check CPU usage, If the memory and cpu usage are not close to the limit, you can rule out a lack of system resources.

Has Poser run under WinXP on this machine before you had the hardware problems? Have you checked all your drivers especially your video drivers? Old or incorrect drivers can wreak havok with a machine.

Your type of video card is supposed to have forward and backward compatibility (UDA) on its device drivers. You are supposed to be able to use the same device driver on newer and older versions of Windows. Windows XP comes with a list of compatible hardware and software but you have checked your equipment against it. Also, ASUS and NVIDIA have webpages with technical support. You can do a cross check at each site to see if there have been any problems with the other's product. The device drivers are one thing you suspect. Another is that the new motherboard is having problems with the Poser hard disk. This disk was formatted by another motherboard under another operating system. Each hard disk gets a low level format and a high level format. The higher level format is the one the user is familiar with. It is what you change when you reformat. When I went to my new system, I brought over my SCSI card, tape drive, and hard disk. It was formatted under Windows 2000 and has FAT32 which I haven't changed. The C: drive is the bootable and the operating system was installed at the factory. I haven't had any real problems with the SCSI system however the tape drive used a 10GB Travan which means multiple cartridges per backup. With the newer machines, you can get a USB external tape unit. They are expensive but you have far more tied up in your software. CD's and DVD's are a real pain compared to tape.

How much Virtual Memory do you have? Maybe you need to allocate more.

Virtual Memory is around 768mb's or something like that when I looked it up this morning. Well: I've been running memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/) and it's come back with four errors so far: Memtest is still running on it's second run, but it'a already found 4 errors: [code] tst pass failing address Good Bad Err-Bits Count 5 0 0000000bfc8 -0.6MB 00400200 00400000 00000200 1 5 0 0000005b4b0 -0.6MB 00400200 00400000 00000200 1 5 1 00000022108 -0.1MB 00010200 00010000 00000200 1 5 1 000000715f0 -0.1MB 00010200 00010000 00000200 1 [/code] Process of Hardware install: Bought the new gear, bought Windows XP. downloaded and installed a new bios from Asus. use my win-me boot floppy to destroy the partitions on my 20gb hard drive. Put in Windows XP pro CD (full copy, not upgrade - student discounts are great S.F. State sells it for $85 after tax) and let it creat two partitions of 10gb each. Formatted primary partition as NTFS and installed Windows XP. Once the install was done I had it format the second partition as NTFS. Then I installed Norton System works 2003, and ran live update several times until it told me there were no more updates. At this point I inserted my 80GB drive into the system. I had Norton fully optomize all three drives, scan the system for any errors, and so on. Then I tried to open my existing copy of Power that was on the 80gb drive (G:). It opened, and I played around for a bit just fine until I decided I wanted to put some clothing on Vicky... The specific item I tried to dress her in was: (searching... what was that called again?...) The Napkin Top tararu has here: http://www.jet.ne.jp/~m-jacky/main.htm Studio Maya Twin Tail (http://digitalcrafts.e.fiw-web.net/1download/wig3/wig4.html) Items I've used before with success. After putting on the clothes, I usually freeze within one to five minutes. After doing such things as conforming, test rendering, tweaking morph dials, texturing, and so on. At some point in the near future, I will get a crash. After my last post in here and just before going after memtest I got a freeze from loading up ACDsee (an image browser with slideshows) and trying to start a slideshow of my image directories - which total around 500mb's to 1gb or so... On running memtest, it froze on the first run of that during test five of ten. This is an application that runs from a floppy-boot without the OS or anything else loaded. Test five is the same test that on the second run of memtest gave the above errors. So I'll be off buying new memory this coming monday - my current chip was bought by someone else, and I need him on hand to get the refund...

On the network question: I only have Poser on that one machine. None of the other machines in the house have hard drives large enough to hold it. Even given that though, the machine was off network when doing all of this. Someday I want to get a portable fireware drive over 100gb's in size so I can walk the app around to wherever I'm at... But since the dot-com crash my budget has been extremely small...

www.googlegear.com has great memory prices. I just bought some Corsair Memory from them. Great stuff!

(Sing along) Memories of the way it used to work... What is it with this sh!t-f@%#ing memory of late? (Pardon my francais) I ordered and installed brand-new, "quality tested and approved" memory from Kingston for my new system recently. Two 1GB DDR DIMMS. One was bad from the start and had to be exchanged. No problems since. Another person above had almost the same identical problem as I just mentioned. Now, it seems that arcady may have bad new memory. I haven't seen these types of memory problems in years and upgrade/expand memory routinely. Quality is diving for memory manufacturers, it appears... arcady, I hope that new memory fixes your problems. Know the frustration. Good luck, mate! Kuroyume

Buy quality name-brand memory from a reputable vendor. Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin are the best brands. www.resellerratings.com and www.pricegrabber.com can tell you who the good vendors are.

Get this --- Since buying that new hardware, this is my fourth memory chip. Monday will be number five. And the first thing I do when I get it home is run that memtest application on it... I'd love to buy online for the price, but I don't trust memory cards anymore, so I want a place local to me where I can run back there a couple times a day if I have to... Fortunately there's a bunch of dealers in one of the Chinatowns who sell brand name chips, as well as two compusa's and two bestbuys within a 20 minute drive of me.

You're lucky. I have a CompUSA about 30 minutes away and a MicroCenter about 45 minutes away - and that's by highway at 70MPH. They're the closest and only choices. There is another CompUSA further, but my experiences there have been dismal and vowed never to enter that store again. Worse, neither carries anything above 512MB (and even they're rare). 1GB and above almost requires online purchase. Kuroyume

I hate to say this, but if you are having repeated memory chip failures, it could be the power that they are getting. Voltage spikes can destroy memory. Using an extension strip with a voltage regulator or a backup power supply can regulate the electrical supply from the wall outlet. You probably have this but the internal power supply can be a problem. PC Power & Cooling makes a great internal power supply with better regulation and cooling.

Good point, Spurlock5. Having adequate cooling is something else to check on, as well. Make sure all your fans are OK. Check your system and CPU temperature from your BIOS. Re-seating problematic memory, cards, and connectors often solves many problems.

Well I finally got a good memory chip (PNY Brand on sale for $69.99-only had one in stock too...), but while I was shopping for it I found a deal for $39.95 on generic brand 512 PC2700 memory, and bought one of those as well. Which turned out to be bad. Returned it today and got a new one which was also bad. Now I'm reading that Athlon systems are ultra sensitive about memory, so on an Intell it's likely all these memory chips would work just fine.... I have to decide if I want to keep returning these chips day in and day out till one tests good, or give up on that deal (brand name goes for $89 at one of the places in Chinatown).

How much would you pay yourself per hour? How many hours have you spent buying, testing, and returning memory? Buy good quality name brand memory and save on "labor" costs!!

If I paid me as little as $10/hour - nothing on this economy, I'd be paying a bill of one to two thousand right now... Thing is, since the dot-crash, I've become a student to survive and transition out of anything to do with technology as a career... In a few years I hope to be the guy that shows up when you tell the police you want to see a lawyer before you talk anymore... :D But for now, I'm a student, and $100 is hard to come by... two years ago that was about my daily pocket change, now it's my luxury budget for a few months... My labor right now, as a web programmer, isn't worth jack...

Sorry to hear that things are so hard for you. I'm a Web/Database Developer, myself. One thing good about working for Uncle Sam is job security. Pay isn't the greatest in the mainland, but out here in Hawaii its pretty good. You might consider becoming a Fed.