I responded to an old post where Mason said: "...Now do you lock up on an actual render part way through or do you lock at the "add Objects" stage? " But, I don't know if anyone will see that one so I thought I'd add a new post. I am despairing of ever rendering with P5 again. sob I have a sony vaio, 1 gb ram, 3ghz cpu p4, ati radeon 9800 pro graphics (graphics card shouldn't matter to poser though) , LOTS of hd space free, etc. A reasonable machine to run P5 on. Hmm,what else? XP home, new system with minimal software installs. Small Poser5 install. I just installed Freak stuff and Michael3 stuff so I could test with smaller Runtime dir. I can render if I select Poser 4 render but I hang up almost always when I try rendering with Firefly. Michael 3 alone rendered. M3 and bodysuit rendered. M3, bodysuit and hooded cape locks up. Always at "Adding Objects". I lowered bucket size to 20, no change. This is driving me crazy. :) This is my 3rd pc in two weeks. I upgraded my pc a couple weeks ago...loved P5 when it ran but a lot of lockups and strange errors. I eventually switched to a new box, same probs. Yesterday, I exchanged and upgraded to my current machine and to my dismay, P5 still hangs but only with Firefly rendering. P5 runs fast everywhere else, loading initially, loading figures and textures and poses, etc. Any thoughts, suggestions? Thanks!

It might simply be an issue with that hooded cape. P5 has had documented problems with certain hair-prop geometries (which were solved by regrouping the mesh), so it's conceivable that a clothing item can trigger a similar effect. Can you render the hooded cape by itself?

Yep, the hooded cape renders FAST in both draft and production modes with all the default settings. Two or three seconds, tops. hmm, I lied, I also had some M3 boots in the scene. I'll try rendering those by themselves. pause A LOT slower but both rendered. Slower means about 10 seconds. Ok, you have me thinking now. What else...umm, I had hair as well, forgot about that. I'll add M3 and try again. pause M3, hooded cloak, boots (Moto boots in Michael's Morphing clothes) all rendered. Much slower (3 mins?) but it worked. Ok, I'll add the hair (Hair/Daz Hair/ MiHai Hair) and see. pause Oho...it stopped at "Adding Objects". Strange, I've used that hair before though. hmm. I'll add M3 and the MiHai hair to a new scene by themselves and try rendering. pause The MiHai hair apparently is blowing it up. I'll load that original scene, remove the hair and try to render. The scene renders...paused for half a minute or so on Adding Objects but ended up rendering quite rapidly once it got going. So, why is the MiHai hair causing this distressing problem? Is there a workaround? Regrouping the mesh? Hmm, how would I do that? BTW, thank you very much little dragon for helping me to think straight about troubleshooting this.

Post a screenshot of your render settings and give your current VM settings, please.

Default P5 render settings.

default VM settings.

Now, I could boost the virtual memory settings but surely a naked M3 with the MiHai hair isn't enough to take my gb of ram and more...

Attached Link: http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17060

Ahhh, so that is why it rendered before. I had run "test" renders in P4 mode first. hmm. Thanks for the link...sheesh, somewhat complicated to fix something I had hoped to use easily. Still, there are steps outlined.

That'll give you your fix, then.

So, this is a "known" bug. Problem is knowing it. I searched many forums for info and only through interacting with people here was I able to get it isolated to that one component, the hair. It would be great if there was a "Known Bugs" forum or website somewhere to search. Is there anything like that out "there" anywhere?

Not that I know of... These things turn up in various forums whenever some product acts weird in one way or another. Someone finds a solution and posts it where the original question was brought up. The good thing is that many people visit several forums and can post the links :-)