I need some advice on choosing the best OS for my computer. Tonight a friend is coming over and will help me completely reinstall my C partition with the operating system.

I have an Athlon 2600++ CPU, a somewhat old GeForce MX4 graphics card, one Gig Ram, 160 gig HD.

On C partition is the Windows OS (presently Windows XP professional) and too many other proggies, on D is Poser and Vue and on E are scene files, downloads and digicam pics and films.

Now here's my problem. Last summer I completely reinstalled windows after a virus had infested my system. The system was clean after that. In August my machine started crashing on moderately complex Vue renders. It also kept crashing when the Vue renders became most simple. Virus scans yielded no results. Next Poser started crashing while rendering. The next step was that Poser crashed already when posing stuff.

Since we couldn't find a virus we evacuated the valuable stuff from C, flattened the partition and reinstalled Windows XP.

Everything was fine until late march when the whole thing started anew.

Does anybody have a clue what's going on? I didn't have that with Windows 98 or Windows 2000.

Should I change my OS? Does XP have a problem with 1 gig Ram?

The most funny thing is that I can play games including Half Live 2 without anything ever crashing. Odd, innit?

P6 is due to arrive in the mail any day and I can't do squat... Grrrrrrr...

Please help!

LooKoo

Message edited on: 04/01/2005 04:24

I have 1Gig of memory in my machine & WinXP runs like a dream unless I do something stupid, I haven't had it crash for more than a year now since I stopped doing stupid things to it. It does sound like your harddrive needs defragging as both Vue & poser get a little tetchy when the HD gets frayed round the edges. If it's Poser4/PP you're using they both have problems with large amounts of memory but there's a fix for both versions on the CL website, Vue4 is known to be a little on the buggy side too.

What kind of stupid things would that be? ;) I got the PP memory patch from CL. The Vue version I used was Vue d'esprit 5. I think it is still Vue 5.1 Could it be that a memory glitch there can affect the system so much that afterwards even Poser 4 PP keeps crashing??? Funny. What's more, someone said that Windows XP can't handle more than 1 gig memory effectively. I am contemplating inflating my memory to the technical limit as soon as I can afford. Is XP really a bottleneck here? Back to Win 2000 or what?

Hi lookoo, I have 2 gig Ram in my 2.6 Athlon PC, XP appears to be very good at handling it, Certainly it's a lot more usefull than my previous 1 gig system. One thing I would say is that I stopped using my 'work' machine for gaming a long while ago and I now rarely encounter any problem's. Your problem may also arrise from one of the 'too many other proggies' on your HD. I'm no expert but it's been my bitter experience in the past that some software packages just don't like being on a HD with other's, for what ever reason. Over the past 7 years I found that if your using a PC for 3D graphic's, then JUST use it for 3D graphic's and NOTHING ELSE! Expensive I know but for my part it DEFFINATELY WORK'S! No doubt one of the technical expert's here could give you a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why that should be. So, ditch the games, lose some of the unnecessary 'proggies' and try it again, i'm willing to bet you'll see a marked difference!

I have 1 gig of RAM now, but that's soon to change. Until mid-March, I ran more than 1 gig of RAM (1.25 gigs) and always have been on Windows XP Professional since it came out basically. It really does sound like your hard drive is in serious need of repair, though. A thorough Scan Disk and Defragmentation may be in order. Your hard drive, despite how old it is, may be trying to take a nose dive on ya. That would be bad. Another thing to check is to make sure all of your files are intact. Updated drivers and all that jazz. Especially since you're getting Poser 6 in the mail any day now. Windows XP handles memory beautifully, I've never had a memory problem with the system.

Thanks for the advice! Seems I will keep Windows XP and streamline my software portofolio ;) At the moment a defragmentation of the Poser/Vue harddrive is underway. I will prolly have to reinstall XP on C. At last that worked somehow last time. Good to hear that 2 Gigs works on Athlon 2600 and XP ? Sounds like the next best thing to do? Thanks again! LooKoo

If you run Norton Anti-Virus or have an old Graphics driver Poser 6 could crash on you... We have experienced that alot in our various users on my site. Check that. Greetings Antonio MP

Yeah, avoid NORTONS like the plague! Also, scan your system with a good 'Spyware' Prog. Like 'SpySweeper'.You'd be amazed at just how slow your system can become if it's clogged with spyware! Also, If you want to use 2 gig Ram with your Athlon you'll need a Motherboard that can take it, I know when I had mine built about a year ago I had a bit of a game finding one.

You mentioned having a virus in the past, but do not mention if you have an antivirus and firewall program. If you don't, then you most likely picked up something again. I'm a bit confused by such terms as "evacuate," in relation to your computer. Perhaps English is not your primary language? That's ok, your message is otherwise fairly clear. It does sound like the people who are giving you computer advice don't know that much about computers. One thing about computer problems: You need to fix whatever caused the problem, or the problem keeps repeating. The best way to do this is to take it one step at a time. I can tell you Windows XP is an excellent operating system. You need to be sure and keep your hardware drivers up to date. You need to perform regular maintenance on your computer. I prefer using Norton's Speed Disk and One button checkup for that task. I did eliminate Norton Internet Security 2005 in favor of PC-Cillin Internet Security Suite, but that was before buying Poser 6. I disagree on keeping your graphics computer "pure." This computer is a multi-purpose computer. I use it to surf the web, create CD labels, make web sites, etc. However, I do not play games. I just don't have the time or patience.

Back when Diablo (by Blizzard) came out, my Mom swore up and down that it was the cause of many problems on the computer. The name of the game itself inspired that I think. The only thing Diablo did to our Windows 95 computer was keep it's icon on the cd drive. Weird error, but nonetheless took the blame for many a computer problems. I fixed them of course, without removing Diablo, but never bothered about the icon thing. Fast-foward to present day. Just on the desktop alone I count... oh... 17 games, 3 modelers, 2 virtual disk managers, 4 multimedia players and a few other odds and ends. All of them co-existing with one another, some even cooperating with each other. The only two reasons to uninstall anything is for A) space or B) doesn't work [the way you want it to]. Poser runs just fine for me. Has in the past, does now and I suspect will in the future. And I'm not intending on uninstalling anything, matter of fact I'm planning on adding even more software soon.

Hi yggdrasil You are of course correct, as I readily admitted, I DON'T know an awfull lot (Technicaly speaking) about computers but I DO know one thing for an absolute certainty...There IS such thing as 'Software Conflict'!!! and also i'm pretty sure that there ARE advantages to keeping computer's 'Pure' I have proven that to myself and other's over and over.'Not wanting to be argumentative OR to contradict you, who quite obviously know a lot more than me about the subject, but I believe that if lookoo is having THAT much of a problem and the normal maintenence regime isn't working then it would be well worth his time trying what I suggest BEFORE he trashes his hard drive or throw's his PC through the window!

With "evacuate" I meant copy all the stuff you want to keep from C partition to another partition and then uninstall/delete anything on the C partition. Then reinstall Windows on C and the necessary things like Word, Drivers, Internet browsers. I did have McAffee antivirus and still have it and used to run it once a month, maybe not often enough ;) Sooo... Scandisc, defragmentation, antispyware...? Maybe getting rid of Quicktime?(Silke just found out that to be a P6 issue...)? And getting the latest hardware drivers, of course. The funny thing is that everything worked well for seven months after I had done the evacuate C /flatten C /reinstall stuff on C thing. Before Poser would never finish a render before crashing. Afterwards everything was running again. BTW, how do I check if programs can coexist "step by step" when after my last C partition purge everything worked perfectly OK for 7 months? I am also pretty sure I didn't catch a virus again. The virus checks didn't show anything. Really odd... I am still pondering if I should follow the road to two separate computer systems - one for graphic works, one for the rest. I would really prefer to have it all on one machine. I will have to "evacuate" the computer lair because that's going to be turned into a room for my 8 months old daughter. And my wife prolly won't love it when I turn the living room into a computer command center with not one but two work stations ;) BTW, has anyone experienced pretty much the same actually? Or are we talking on a somewhat theoretical level here? Cheers, LooKoo

Hi again lookoo I had a situation when I first got Poser5, I just COULD NOT get poser to run anywhere near properly. If I ran Poser during the same session as Photoshop 5 ie. without re starting my PC in between. Poser would just hang or take an age to load items from the library. I had cause to re format my C drive one time and after re loading all my software by chance left off Photoshop,Poser worked like a dream! I didn't make the connection at the time, believing it was the re format that had done the trick. So I reinstalled Photoshop....Right back to square one! The very same thing happened when I got Photoshop 7 but interestingly all worked fine with Photoshop CS. I,ve got a PC based home recording studio that I had a very similer problem with that was sorted using the same approach, but I won't go into that. It's only a thought, that's all..It might help, it might not, in any case it would be a case of clear everything off your drive, install poser and try it if it works, add one more prog. at a time and test again until you hit a problem then you'll know for sure.

Hmmmmm, that's interesting! I will try to be a lil more purist and try reinstalling stuff one at a time. So much seems to be clear by now: Compatibility issues of programs shouldn't exist but in a complex and imperfect world like this they do. For future reference, two separate systems is a luxury but apparently they help avoiding some problems. Thanks! LooKoo

One thing which might be a problem is the physical RAM. Programs such as Poser use a lot of RAM, and if one of the memory modules has a problem it can eascape notice for a long time. It doies rather look as if running defrag is worth trying. That is the sort of problem that can build up over several months. And the individual partitions, size and free space, are more significant than the total size of the drive.

If you have a virus infected computer, the last thing you want to do is copy stuff off your hard drive, and reinstall it or copy it back to your computer once you're reformatted and started over. Think about it. If your computer is infected, anything you copy to CD's or floppies is potentially infected. If you don't keep up your antivirus program, you may as well hang a sign on your door saying "I like viruses."

Have you seen those AOL commercials? It's the same thing. I hate AOL, but they have a valid point. You need to get protected and stay protected.

Now I also have to wonder about all these virtual disk or memory managers. I don't use any of that stuff, and really think they cause more trouble than harm. There just is no substitute for getting the proper amount of memory and hard drive space.

I've never used any of that stuff, and I've never had any problems running any version of Poser. So maybe I'm doing something right?

Message edited on: 04/01/2005 15:00