Thanks for all your responses :-) My system is Windoze XP, P4 2.66ghz, 512mb RAM. The RAM is the only thing I'm concerned with as although I used to run my old computer on 64MB (which ran Bryce, Vue and Poser all with very few problems!!) I may well upgrade the RAM on this one to at least double what it is now. A couple of days back it was crashing while rendering to disk so I started it again and rendered to screen instead. It managed it that time. Was rendering on Final at 1152x864 120dpi. I did have a glowing material in there. Previously it's crashed while I was in the plant editor and afterwards when I tried opening it again, it crashed as soon as the programme opened. It does seem very intermittent and doesn't seem connected with anything in particular. I WILL try your suggestion gebe, and disable Open GL. As for the PSD option, I use that when saving out of Bryce as I find it gives the best results, and even in you don't have Photoshop you can still open PSD files in some other programmes (like PSP). I'd be interested to see how this thread spins out. Once again, thanks everyone Gill

Gill