I don't know, I think it might just be your computer. Not that your computer is really all that slow, but I just upgraded from a 1.4 ghz to a 2.8ghz pentium, and it is really a huge difference. For example, in poser 5, my old computer would lock up like yours is when trying to render a single frame of dynamic hair, and the new one will render that same frame in about 5 minutes. For something you could relate to, I made a physics animation recently of a few gemstones (about a dozen)dropping and bouncing. I rendered 5 seconds of it at 15 fps, at a resolution of 320x240, and it took about two hours. If I were going to do that same animation at 640x480, 30Fps, I'd leave it to render when I went to bed, and expect it to be done by morning. Add GI to that, and I'd have to leave it rendering friday night, and hope it'd be done monday morning! If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that the area where yours is locking up is right around when the letters start to collide with each other, and it suddenly has more interactions to calculate. Try leaving it rendering while you sleep, or go to work, or school, whichever, and see if it's still going when you get back. If you know that it takes, say, 2 hours to get to frame 90 where it slows to a crawl, and you leave it going for 8 hours while you work/sleep/school, and it's only on frame 101 when you get back, there's a problem.... Of course, I could be wrong....