Decided to up grade to 5, but am not a happy camper. My computer more then meets the requirements. Although I'm running windows 98 and still a Pentium 3. I'm finding poser5 takes forever to start up. And I never know if it's froze up or loading. I don't have all day to load Vicky then wait to load a texture or is it froze. I'm very disappointed and fustrated.I notice there's a service pack will this help?

I wouldn't say "more than meets the requirements". My system is a dual 2.66GHz Xeon with 2GB memory running WinXP Pro and it still takes some time to start (23 seconds, without Don-key Hotay in the default scene). Does that make you feel better? :) SR3 or SR4 will help, if not already included with the upgrade that you purchased. SR3 shows as version 5.0.2.281. Updating your OS will help as well. Poser don't like Win98. WinME sucks. Win2000 or WinXP are far better choices. Kuroyume

If you do upgrade to windows xp be warned, some of your windows 98 programs wont work anymore and the good find in windows 98 has been replaced by a crappy retarded version. I had windows xp installed on my computer recently, but I went back to windows 98. I think a better solution for windows 98 users would be a dual boot system, so you can boot up with windows 98 or windows xp.

I'm not sure that XP will run on a Pentium 3 ... I think it requires a minimum of a 450 mHz computer, and that is even wishful thinking. Plop P5 on top of that and you will have some serious performance lag.

It's not "just you." I agree...get the upgrades to at least sr2. I went from sr2 to sr4 and P5 got slower. But, in my experience, P5 will always be slower than P4 no matter what you do. I run both p4/pp and P5 on a winXP pro, dual-xeon 1.7, with one gig-o-ram and 100 gig hard drive machine and P5 is a dog compared to P4/PP.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to try the upgrades. I just spent the last week uninstalled and reinstalled poser4 with just the stuff I use a lot and now it runs so much better. Hoping to upgrade my computer soon too.

XP Min Req: 300MHZ, 128MB, 1 gig to install (!?) 256MB is required to have access to certain features, and the base overhead on a "clean" system as installed is about 117MB on RAM.

Thinking of going back from P5/SR4 to SR3, at least I knew all of the bugs and what to expect, and I will trade a bit of instability for much faster rendertimes.

As regards what OS to use, Win 2k Pro Sr3 not SR4, as 4 seems to be buggy. What is it about SR4's??
I still think Win 2k Pro is the best OS Gatesville ever produced.

I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and I just took the hard drives from my old computer and installed them as slaves in my new computer. Almost all my programs ran fine, including some dating from my DOS days. (In fact, DOS programs run much better under XP than they do under 98.) I've upgraded this way for 15 years - just transferred entire hard drives from machine to machine - so I have Win3.x, Win95 programs, Win98 programs, and DOS programs, all mixed together. The upgrade to XP was the easiest ever. I did have to set some programs to run in "compatibility" mode, but other than that, all was smooth and sweatless.

There were only two programs I couldn't get to run. One was my Day-Timer software, which has been discontinued and is now unsupported. Actually, it runs, but gives me an annoying error message every time I start it. I can live with that, though. The other program that wouldn't run was an HTML editor that dated from when Win95 was new. There had been four upgrades since, the oldest three now being offered free. I installed one of them, and that fixed that.

I do run XP in "classic" mode, though. I just can't get used to the standard XP look.

If you're running Windows 98 on a PIII, it is time to get a new computer with Windows XP. I have a Celeron 533mhz computer with Windows XP. I run Daytimer 98 just fine. I suggest you reinstall all your software when upgrading to Windows XP.

I don't understand the problem with upgrading from Win98 (an OS over SIX years old) to one that is newer, supported, and, IMHO, more reliable. XP is based on the NT/2000 kernel and therefore is much more stable than 95/98/ME. Plus, it has optimized features to enhance performance (drivers, memory handling, filesystem, etc.). My only advice when you do upgrade is to immediately turn off that damned GUI (check System Properties->Advanced->Performance->Best Performance). This makes a big difference in performance. You could probably get a new mobo, a P4 at over 1GHz and 512MB memory for under $200, possibly under $100 if you research a little.

Every once and a while it helps if you set the Compatibility of a non-runner to "Windows 98" or even "Windows 95". RightClick the shortcut, Properties, Compatibility tab, take your pick, turning off the advanced textservices helps too.

DayTimer 98 works fine, but I'm running DayTimer 2000. I could revert to 98, but I prefer 2000. I like being able to color-code my task list. :-) And yes, I did try reinstalling. (I do try that if a program won't run.) The error message I'm getting is "The apps path variable for 2to2k.exe is incorrect. Please reinstall the product." But, as I said, re-installing doesn't help. Neither does compatibility mode. But it still runs; it just gives me that error message whenever I start it up. I've gotten used to it.

I reinstalled last night but still have problems. don't know what will happen when I load it up with all my stuff. Right now I'll just play with it and create in poser 4. Thanks

Please forgive this rant, but I just have to say this. I don't know how many posts I've read and contributed to here about Poser 5 and specifically about system requirements. Allyou have to do is search the topic "Poser 5" and up jumps a crapload of posts. While I feel badly that it's not working properly on your machine drag, frankly, "it is you". I wish people would do a bit of research here, at Poser Pros, at RDNA, etc., etc., before they jump up and buy Poser 5. The system requirements listed on that box and probably at the CL website are misleading! I and many others have stated a number of times in a number of posts that Poser needs lots of ram. It needs a fast processor. It needs an operating system than can manage it's dumb ass (which is not any flavor of Windows 9x, BTW). But in spite of the repetitive posting on this topic, sure as hell along comes someone else who can't get Poser 5 to work on a Pentium III running windows 98!! I also have a message for Curious Labs: If you are still telling your customers that they can use this software successfully on a PIII with 128 mb of ram.....STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Drag, if you're going to use Poser 5, get a new computer. If you can't get a new computer, put Poser 5 on a shelf until you can. Now.....I know the next thing that will happen is someone who has a PII with 64 mb of ram will post and say: "Hey....whaddya mean!! I can run it just fine.....goes really fast tew and I can render 95 figures widout a prublem in less than 10 sexunds!!!" Ya, right!!

LOL Sandoppe! I agree. And how about the threads titled "HELLLPP!!" and nothing more? Hell... I click on those just because my life IS that empty :P Anyway, I rarely have to post a question here because the back pages of the forum usually will answer it. Sure, it takes a little time but then again, what doesn't? To Drag, I've found the best way to run Poser(4 or ProPack) is to run it by itself. My Pentium II(350mhz) will allow Winamp for background music but, anything else running with Poser slows things WAYYY down (with 350mhz whaddya expect). Most Poser5 users complain about the slower rendering times so I'm guessing that your problem is a typical one. The main thing to keep in mind is this... RESOURCES! Poser is a memory and cpu intensive program to begin with, so running other apps in the bgnd WILL slow it down REGARDLESS of what kind of supermachine ya got!

Uh, not a multiprocessing machine, honey. ;0P Poser ain't that good yet. It only uses one processor. The other is free to do as it pleases. :)

Well cyberscape....glad to hear you're not running Poser 5 on that PII of yours !! LOL! kuroyume0161: I was thinking of getting a new PIV 3.0 ghz machine with the new HT technology and apparently P5 runs slower on those machines than it does on a slower PIV. Maybe that's because HT only simulates a multiprocessor?

It's not just Poser 5. Basically, any program that wasn't specifically designed to take advantage of hyperthreading will run slower with hyperthreading than without.

Yes, you are correct, sandoppe. But I'm running a real dual-processor machine (with HT on both cpus). :) So, while Poser is busy plugging up the one processor, I can surf the web, listen to music, and work in Photoshop & C4D without paying dearly. And I agree with both you and randym77. HT is a "pipe dream" (hehe). It is great for multithreading applications that take advantage of it, not so great otherwise.

Just out of curiosity, which applications do take advantage of the hyperthreading technology? I'm hoping Poser will get to the point where it can take advantage of it, because I would guess most new computers will be featuring it and frankly creating a "slower P5" is not my idea of a good time! :)

I know Photoshop takes advantage of hyperthreading. Not sure about any others. I'm sure more will, eventually. Maybe Poser 6...

Heck, I can run a bunch of programs at the same time, without noticeable difficulty, and I only have an Intel Celeron 533 Mhz cpu.

Bobbie: That's probably pretty close to a PII. You don't have 64 mb of ram by any chance, do you?!!! :)

{Hey....whaddya mean!! I can run it just fine.....goes really fast tew and I can render 95 figures widout a prublem in less than 10 sexunds!!!"} Hey, how did you know I got Poser 5 to do this? Okay, I'll fess up: I'm really using Windows 95. I was able to render 97 V3 figures in the same scene, in 9.89 seconds. How did I do it? It's very simple: first, I overclocked my PV 3.2Ghz ATI-DZ chip to a motherboard speed of 5.6Ghz @ 135 G cycles per sec. Next, I reconfigured the memBIOS circuit to use a bus speed of 255 Kjls. Next, I resoldered the dip switch to an alternating frequency of 10.45 quads/ cycle. Next, I reconfigued the virtual memory to a setting of 1.22^10 +- my installed memory. And, viola, Poser 5 runs great on Windows 95. I haven't tried on Windows 98, but with these simple modifications, anyone can get Poser 5 to work with Windows 98.

Nitrogen cooling, John? ;) Yep, them's the specs to run Poser 5...

I have 512MB of RAM.