Hi, All of a sudden, for no reason that I can understand, my copy of Poser 4 PP has got sick. When I run the program, any model in the window is invisible - but it's there, as I can see the outlines of body sections if I run my mouse over the pic. And if I press render, Poser starts using the CPU at 100%, but sits there forever with no results. I'm not sure what I might have done to cause this. I installed a few new models, but nothing out of the ordinary. I also recently installed PBoost, but haven't been using it. I seem to remember hearing that P4 started to get sick once the runtime directory reached a certain number of folders or something... could that be it? I'd be really grateful if anyone who's encountered my problem could give me some advice. Please don't tell me that I have to reinstall the whole thing and rebuild my entire Runtime!!!??? Thanks! Morph

More than 254 folders in any catgory in the runtime means problems. It's usually the Pose folder that reaches that size because of all MAT files... Have you tried deleting the rsr file in the Geometries folder (the one that belongs to the obj file) for the models that behaves the way you describe? Corrupted geometry rsr's is a common problem. After they are deleted, Poser rebuilds them when the model is loaded. Even if you have to re-install, you can keep your runtime by copying it to another location on your HD and replacing the installed "standard" runtime with your old one. Saves you the agony of having to install all your downloaded content.

Hi, Kelderek, and thanks for the reply. I don't think it's a corrupted rsr, because no matter what model I load, (or even if I import an obj file) I get the samw result. I've also been looking through my runtime file, and none of the categories are even close to 254 folders. I think I'm going to have to take your third option - move the runtime, uninstall/reinstall poser, check that the new install works, and then move the runtime back. If that doesn't fix things, it should at least show whether my runtime is causing the problem or not. I'll report back, and let you know what happened. Thanks again. Morph

Ok. I used Windows uninstall to get rid of my P4PP, then deleted the poser directory just to make sure everything was gone. Then I reinstalled Poser 4 - no extras. Not even the Pro Pack. And when I run it, the problem is still there. The window looks grey and empty, but when I move the mouse over it I can see the outlines of the poser-guy's body. I guess this means the problem isn't in the poser directory anywhere, but somewhere else in my PC. If anyone can give me the slightest clue how to fix this, I'd be really grateful. I'm depressed! Morph

On the non-working P4 installation, I tried to delete the invisible figure, and loaded another - which also remained invisible. I tried to render it, to see what would happen. This time, before using 100% of the CPU and stalling, Poser gave me the message that it didn't have enough memory, and that I should allocate more memory to poser. This is on a PC with 2 Gig of Ram, and poser never gave me any problems like this before. Also, all my other software (including Poser 5) is running with no problems. Once again, if anyone can point me to a solution, I'd be very VERY grateful! Morph

try contacting CL tech support. ive been seeing P4 deaths often....is there a P4 plague going on? good i got 2 AV programs to protect my Poser people.

Hi biggert. No, a virus isn't to blame - my machine is clean. I've tried to contact CL. When I fill out the form on their site, then click OK, the same page just reloads (but without all the stuff I've just typed in), so I've no idea if they've even got my message, or if there's a glitch on their web page. REALLY annoying...

Do you have the large memory patch from CL?

The large memory patch... To be honest. Poser has been on my machine for so long that I don't know whether I installed that or not... Wasn't it only needed for versions before 4.0.3? 4.0.3 is what I'm running. In any case, Poser has been running perfectly on this machine for a long time, before it suddenly died last night, so I don't think that's the problem. If I ever used that patch, it will be somewhere on my poser CD collection. I'll have a look and run it again, but I honestly don't think it will help.

Sorry to post yet another message, but I'm trying to give as many clues as possible, in the hope that someone might be able to help me. I just TRIED to run the Pro-Pack memory patch (I've reinstalled P4 and the Pro-Pack). It won't work, because it says I don't have a valid Poser installation - even though it found the Poser directory etc when I ran it. Now I'm REALLY depressed. Morph

are you useing a previously saved pz3 or opening poser fresh? have you tried restoring the factory defaults?

Hi geoegress - I've totally uninstaled, then re-installed, so I'm using factory defaults. I've also tried restoring the defaults, with no luck. I'm starting to wonder if there's some problem down in the windows registry or something. Morph

Morph.. if you're running xp do a restore back to a date that you were having no problems. Ed

and this happens with anything loaded? props? hair? whats your display mode? sorry guy- I'm just trying to figure this out

ok- this is weird- but try it- load your figure- then open your systems clock, down on the task bar. render- see if it does

Did you try to delete the Poser entries in the Windows registry after uninstall? The uninstall utility should do this, but you never know... As for the "out of memory" message: This is Posers way of saying "I'm confused and do not have a relevant error message to show you". Does not necessarily have to do with memory problems at all.

Ok, to answer a few questions... I did the system restore - I really thought that might fix things. Poser was working fine up to yesterday evening, so I went to a restore point the day before that. The weird result was that Poser wouldn't even load. Plus, a lot of stuff I purchased from Daz yesterday vanished from my hard drive - arg! I thought the little blurb when you run System install said you wouldn't lose data - thanks for nuthin', Bill Gates... So I undid the restore, got my Daz purchases back, and got back to a version of Poser that will load but not work. I tried the system clock thing - no luck. After the uninstall, I fired up regedit and took out all the references to Poser 4 before reinstalling. No luck. I'm really not aware of changing anything in my PC that might have caused this. I'm really starting to panic here, wondering if I'll ever get P4 to run on this machine again, short of wiping the entire hard drive and starting from scratch - total nightmare! Could this be God's way of telling me to switch totally to p5? I'm working on a project that's supposed to have an end of january deadline, so this is really not funny! Morph

I'm on a Mac and a few months ago P4PP took out my HD when it crashed. Luckily, it was on a secondary external drive, but I still haven't found some of my favorite goodies on the 8 or 9 cds of backup and lost alot of cool brushes and plugins for PS that I had collected. I hope you have better luck.

does it open correctly in P5?

I had a very similar thing happen to me awhile back....drove me nuts for two days. At someones suggestion,I uninstalled PBoost(which I had gotten a week earlier),and reinstalled PoserProPack...solved the problem. Have not used PBoost since. SWAMP

P5 is working perfectly - I can load any poser file and it's fine, even if taken from the P4 runtime. P4 just does the invisible routine no matter what I load.

Sibling rivalry perhaps... Glad you got something working to finish your project. SWAMP

Just another thought from left field for you......how much hard-drive space do you have? Poser tends to eat that space up pretty fast, and it does not play nice if it doesnt have enough free space to play with. Rawnrr

Thanks, Rawnrr, but I have about 90 gigs of free space, so that can't be it. It's very depressing. I don't think I'm ever going to get P4 running on this machine again. This is the first time I ever had a working program just die on me, for no apparent reason. Morph

I just thought of something... how big is your windows swap file. I have a friend that bought Poser 4 and it wouldn't run on his machine. I couldn't figure out why. I kept giving me the out of memory error. The HD on his computer is 120GB and the swap file was huge so I set it smaller and it started working. I don't remember what I set it to though and he's at work right now. Ed

Ed, I looked at my swap file and saw it was set somewhere round 3700 megs. I tried reducing this to 2000, and poser still didn't work. I was just about to write and say 'thanks, but it didn't help', but just for the heck of it I decided to try a setting of 1000 megs. And Pow. Poser 4 is working just fine again. I've still no idea why it suddenly stopped, though. Is it possible for Windows to secretly increase the amount of virtual memory without telling you? (like the way VISA companies slowly increase your credit limit...) Anyway, I'm V V V V V happy. Poser has never died on me before, and I'm shocked at how lost I felt without it! I suppose what I need to do now is to slowly increase the size of the virtual memory to see how high it can get before Poser objects? I mean, a big virtual memory is a good thing normally, isn't it? (genuine question!) And thanks again, to everyone who tried to help. I'm more grateful than I can say. Morph

Just for reference I just checked mine and it's 1548MB. Ed

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com/articles/articleview/215/1/65

Thanks, Ed - I'll try mine at around 1500 too. Layingback, I downloaded that patch yesterday as part of my efforts to get things working, but for some reason when I run it, I get the message that I don't have a valid poser installation, then it quits. So no, I'm not using the patch, but Poser is working again anyway. Thanks again everyone. This forum is a real lifesaver sometimes! Morph

I think that's the one that some of us have had to install manually. For some reason if you let it install on it's own it won't recognize the poser installation. It's weird. But it's easy to fix. When it asks if you want to install to your poser directory click on no or cancel, I forget which it is, and use the browser to point it to where poser is installed. It should work fine then.

Thanks, KateTheShrew - that did the trick! Morph