Hey everyone. I recently had the joy of reformatting my main harddrive which held Poser4 and ProPack - gotta love those virus builders...NOT! Anyway, I'm running WinXP with 512Mb of RAM and can't remember what the best virtual memory settings should be. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! As of now my main HD is partitioned into 4 sections - C:Windows 98 , D:WinXP , E:Poser(forV1,2) and F:PoserV3. I haven't put ProPack back in yet since the slower speed far outweighs the few added features that it has over Poser4. A bit of advice for those unaware... If you have any add-on content in your computer that has an installer (ie - like DAZ 3D stuff) - SAVE IT TO CD NOW!! The virus WinNT.pif.ni wreaked major havoc on anything that had an exe extention. I didn't lose much but, the Goth Coulture Boots by Daz were really cool. My V3 will miss 'em. Peace out CyberscapE

If you still have those Daz exe files,you can DL and use the program Win/Rare to "extract" the Poser related files. They useally are virus free,but if not they can be fixed with Norton. I would go ahead and put Propack back on. The speed different is slight,but ProPack,with the sr3 and memory update does seem to be more stable. Your virtual memory settings(WinXP) by default are min=11/2 times your installed memory...and max=3 times. In your case that would be 768 min/1536 max. Those settings should do you well.... BTW,Nowdays,with higher installed memory and Win NT the importants of VM settings is greatly over- exaggerated...people that put the settings up to large amounts really don't do anything, but take up more disk space (but it makes them feel better). SWAMP

Regardless of what settings you use for your VM [2x RAM is pretty safe for min&max], be sure to reset your VM from time to time as a routine disk maintenance procedure. Files being swapped in and out on a regular basis do have a tendency to become corrupt at times.

Thanks for the advice runs off to change VM settings. Never thought to check on a SR for ProPack. I'll do that tonight. Thanks again!

swamp, are you talking about WinRar? I actually had the same virus eat several dozen of my .exe files, including DAZ self installers. I tried what you said and opened the files in WinRar, but I got an error message saying they were damaged. Then I tried opening files that I know aren't damaged but was unable to open those either, I got the same message.

Just a note on lost files that anyone's bought from Daz. I've had nothing but the very best service from them since day one. If you have paid for something and lost it, email them and I'm sure they'll give you access to the file or files you bought and you'll be able to download them again thru your account page. It doesn't hurt to ask and you have nothing to lose. There should be a record for every purchase you've made if you want to check what you might have lost and I'm very sure they'll grant access to files that are bought and paid for if you need additional downloads.

You didn't tell us the size of your hard drive. I don't partition any hard drives. There just isn't any need these days when hard drives are so inexpensive. Besides, you never know when you might decide one partition is too small, etc. The best thing anyone can do is immediately backup any new Poser stuff to CD's. I routinely install all my stuff to a temporary directory, then re-arrange it the way I want. Then I make CD's with the original and new files, and then I install the stuff into Poser. Oh, yes, you really want to backup your Poser installation(s). I have Poser 4 and Poser 5 safely backed up onto CD's Yes, it took the better part of a day to backup the 14.7 GB Poser 4 installation. But it would take several days to reinstall everything if it had been lost! Do you have a special need to have more than one operating system available? I've never had a need to "go back" once I installed Windows XP.

Definitely contact sales@daz3d.com about the model and explain what happened. They're very good about stuff like that. mac

actually I did contact DAZ and they told me I need to pay them $25 for an "account burn". but maybe they'll make an exception for cyberscape.

Hey SWAMP! I tried WINrar and it worked on some of the stuff! Thanx!! I'll check with Daz on the rest. BTW - the HD in question is 60gb/7200rpm. I'll go bigger and better as finances will allow later. As for Win98, I still use it for some music programs and a DJ controller that WinXP just-won't-run.

cyber, can you tell me how you used it? did you just try to open the DAZ .exe files with WinRar?

Oh good God I'm sorry Zarabanda..... I couldn't sleep last night due to a flu buggy,and today I see my thoughts got jammed togeather in one confusing sentence. Still don't feel great,but I think my mind is working a little better,so I'll try again.... Win/Rar can be used to extract the archive files from programs that are packaged as a single exe file (some examples..ZBrush,PSP,some Poser utilities,etc.). You can't use it on the actual Daz exe file (like Vicky),because there is nothing to "extract"..it's just a bunch of codeing. But once the files are installed from the Daz exe,those files are virus free (talking about obj's.cr2's,etc.). You can then use Win/Rar to pull those files out of Poser,and make your own self-install file with no virus. Truth is Daz exe files are very prone to virues (I think on purpose to fight against warzes),but Win/Rar self-install files are very immune to them. I learned my lesson a year or so back.... I have double backups of everything on CD,and all are converted to Win/Rar's. Daz is pretty cool about replaceing a few files,but do start charging as the amount of files goes up. I hope I made sense this time,and once again sorry Zarabanda. Stuffy SWAMP

SWAMP pretty much summed it up. What I did was run the daz.exe files to load into a folder separate from Poser. Then I ran Norton across that folder to doublecheck. Then I used WinRAR to make new zipped folders. Only 3 daz.exe's were totally lost (which I'll check with them on Monday about redownloading). As of now, all of my content (free and bought) is no longer packaged in exe's(including Daz stuff). Now I'm still organizing and burning CDs. Thanks for the help on both topics everyone! Hopefully any newbies out there can learn from this! Later