P5 with latest service release, Win XP Home. Help! Over the past couple of weeks, I'll be in the middle of creating a scene in P5, and it locks the whole PC up. No cursor/mouse, no error message, no keyboard response. Can't even ctrl/alt/del. I have to hit the hard reset button. This only seems to happen when I'm working in the pose window - I've never had it in the material room or while rendering. It seems to be improved (but not solved) if I use box tracking or fast tracking mode. This leads me to think it could be my graphics card. I have a NVidia GE-Force 4 card, which I've had for a couple of years and has never given me any other trouble. I've tried reinstalling Poser, thinking maybe something got corrupted, but it hasn't helped. I'm considering reinstalling Windoze along with buying a new hard drive, but I don't want to go through that hassle if its something else. Anyone got any ideas?

I had the same problem :my computer was often lock up with Poser.It was about my memory ram.Check with memtest if it is ok:sometime i had write errors on one of my DDR memory.I change it for new one and my probleme was fixed.Or Check if you are enough memory for the scene you are create(too more peoples and props..)...Poser is not the best soft for manage memory.Now with 2 meg DDR ok i have no more freeze with Poser

How much memory do you have? How much space left on the hard drive? Have you recently defragged your hard drive?

My understanding about Poser fom what I've read and seen in this forum is video card has no bearing on Poser at all. I thik martial and bobbie are on the right track. It sounds like a memory problem more than anything else. Check hard disk space first making sure you have plenty of free space, defrag the hard disk. Check your memory to make sure you have plenty, I had 256 MB RAM and Poser 5 locked up frequently. I have 1 GB of 333DDR RAM now and have had 1 lock up in 3 months and was with 5 V3 and M3 figures in the scene.

Glad to find out I'm not the only one with this issue. Just incase, I am going to buy more memory, but it's hard to figure out which memory card matches the one I have installed. I've found that defragmenting frequently helps, even if it does take forever. My issue usually freezes when I'm pulling the slider down in the library window, so I intend to get OUT of that habit... It's also locked up when I play NWN, though it was in a highly understandable part FOR it to. TONS of monsters strewn around...

Well, I have a gig of DDR RAM, and I defrag fairly often. I went to the NVidia site and downloaded some new drivers for the video card, and cross fingers so far it seems to have improved things. I haven't had a lock up since doing that a few hours ago, and I've been working extensively in Poser since then, with full tracking on. I know Poser doesn't take advantage of the graphics card when rendering, but I wonder if it is important in the preview window?

Not from my understanding, however a corrupt video driver could have created a similar problem, but I would have expected it to show up a lot more often with other apps than Poser. Especially ones that use the video processing like games and photo-editing software. Khrys if you don't much about hardware, you are best to either have professional check out the type of RAM in your system and compatibility with your motherboard and other chips. If you are brave and willing to take the risk, you can pull your memory chip and write down all the info on the sticker of the chip and take that to your neighborhood hardware retailer to determine compatibility. Motherboards and memory chips are very particular these days and the generic BestBuy chips are often not compatible. Please take care and I accept no responsibility for the advice given here! (You get what you pay for!)

Larsen, I recently took out my memory card to clean, because I was told that this issue could have been caused by both memory being low and by overheating, and dust keeps things from cooling properly. I was able to reinstall it without problem. So that, in and of itself, doesn't worry me. What DOES worry me is spending money on a memory card and having it be incompatable. Bleh.

Yeh, it's a real problem. Especially, when it comes to the latency timimg on the new chips. One of my suppliers accidently sold me 2 supposed match chip sets and one was 2.5 latency and the other was 2.7. Obviously when booted up the system didn't work properly and it took a return to basic troubleshooting to find the problem. I never remove chips to clean, just use a can of air to blow out the system myself. Take care!

Locked up my system too. I was running old SDRAM memory 1.5 GB and found out after replacing the whole setup with an Athlon XP2500 512 DDR that Poser5 was still putting a strain on my processor. The safety shut off on my proc. is set at 55 degrees and P5 makes it jump from 38 to 50 degrees just loading a DAZ3D figure fully clothed and textured. After the figures are loaded the temp drops back down but it jumps again when rendering. Burned out my old 1.4GB proc. ATI 8500DV, old K7 motherboard and HD. I rendered one comic around 300 panels at 980 X 570 72dpi and it started to die. Now the replacement is acting up and its definitely poser related.