I've just got to have a moan to the only folks who are likely to understand what I mean. That CANCEL button, if I hit it once I've hit it a hundred times, well at least I did that today, but it did not cancel. Aparently Poser was still running, using the CPU by 0-97%, but it wouldn't close the render box with the cancel button. I tried to close Poser and the task manager still said it was running but it wouldn't close down. Anyway, I finally had to do a restart to get rid of it at last. Can anyone say why Poser has such a problem cancelling things when you tell it to? Exasperated Catlin 8)

Yup. It's because Poser had pretty much disappeared up its own arse by that time. The Cancel button will work if Poser isn't chugging away at a long process. Chances are, Poser is doing some ridiculously long number crunching and won't listen to the outside world until that's finished. The program routines go something like this: 1. Calculate a number and pass the result to the program register. 2 .When that's finished, pop your head around the door and see if anyone is telling me to do something else. 3. If they are, stop what you're doing and do what the person outside is telling you to do. 4 .If they aren't, carry on with the next task on the list. I believe it works on interrupts, in the same way that XP and other systems read the keyboard; in other words, it has to wait for a gap in the running process before it can actually do anything. In this case, Poser isn't getting past step 1. There's not a whole lot you can do about it when it gets to this stage, but Task Manager will shut it down eventually.

The cancel button, for the most part, is to cancel any chance of salvaging your work. Well, sometimes.

Thankfully I did save it before I started on this venture into renderland so I can go back and torment Poser again later. lol 8)

I have much better luck using 'Esc' to cancel - never use the button anymore. Sometimes still locks - but better...

You don't have to restart your machine to kill Poser. Here's how: 1) Open Task Manager: hit Ctrl-Alt-Del or right-click the Taskbar and select Task Manager. 2) Click on the "Applications" tab. 3) Click on Poser and click the "End Task" button. Normally this works, but if Poser is off doing it's thing, then it may just sit there. If that happens, do this: 4) Click on the "Processes" tab. 5) Look for "poser.exe" 5a) If you can't see it, click on the CPU column to sort by CPU usage: Poser is probably the highest. 6) Click on poser.exe and click the "End Process" button. 7) Windows will complain about how this is bad and you shouldn't interrupt a program, yadda, yadda, yadda. Click "yes" or "ok" or "do it anyway" and Poser will die immediately. Then, re-open Poser and go about your business. :)

In my experience (P5 sr4.1 pc firefly render) I can only cancel if Poser is actualy in the final "render" stage where it is putting the image on the screen. If its adding objects, or rendering shadow maps, yould better wait or your going to lock it up. Onece it gets to the final stage you can kill it "safely". At least it has always worked for me (occationaly it will take a minute, but it will cancel out)

Well I discovered that my restarting my machine caused Poser to corrupt several files on the drive I keep my runtimes on. I've had to scan disk twice to correct and delete all the damaged files. I know about the ctrl:alt:del, but hitting the esc button is new to me, I think I'll try that next time it happens, 'cos you know it will happen again. lol 8) P5 has only done this to me when using the firefly renderer before and this is the first time it's happened when using the P4 renderer. Actually when I try to make an image say at 4000x3000 with firefly it always crashes and if I want an image rendered at this size I've usually alway got to use the P4. Does anyone know why firefly has such problems with this? Thanks 8) Catlin

Oh, I should say I've got the lastest update installed. 8)