hello again.. I just got my brand new computer and without hesitation I installed Poser 5 Right off. After installation finished.. I tried booting poser.. and all that did was send my new computer crashing.. (sniff tear).. After some investigation, I figure out that Its Poser and SP2 specific.. (GO FIGURE) So On the Curious Labs Website I found This.. figures I had to go High-end AMD-64 =c P .. Anyway.. I was wondering if anyone else has found a solution to this problem. I can not uninstall XP SP2 as it was integrated into the version of windows I purchased.. Please help.. BLAH .. I love microsoft Below is the message from the Curious Labs website. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Recently we've seen problems cropping up that stem from Windows XP Service Pack 2's implementation of data execution prevention (a security feature designed to help prevent some kinds of Trojans and viruses from executing)- on 64-bit AMD-based machines in particular, installing both our Service Release 4.1 updater and Windows XP SP2 prevents Poser from launching. We're working towards a fix for this, but for the moment we urge high-end AMD-based Poser users to hold off on installing SP2 until we can get a new service release out. If you have installed SP2 and require its features, you can run Poser in safe mode; this is not a convenient solution but it should allow Poser to run.

I know it's not the best solution security wise (if there is danger of attack that you are leaving yourself vulnerable to in this instance?)... but have you tried turning off DEP for Poser 5? It's possible to disable the protection for particular programs - a search for 'DEP' in Win XP (SR2) help will reveal just how you can do this. I suppose it's down to your 'risk analysis' of potential attack whether or not to attempt this possible fix?

wow, i had no idea this issue existed. i just finished building my 64 bit system, and my windows XP CD has SP2 streamlined onto it. #%@$ poser 5, SP2, and 64 bit AMDs have all been around for a while... im biting my tongue about CL, since they say they are working on it so ill give them a chance. i was under the impression that DEP was able to be turned off in winXP, and thats the first 'solution' that came to mind. weve lived without DEP for years, so i dont think its the end of the world to disable it... although it irks me when i have to make compromises like that for software. ill try turning it off specifically for the program first, and let you know how that goes. if not, i guess ill have to turn the feature off entirely, and if that fails ill have to set up a second machine for poser. sigh

tried it over and over again.. to no avail.. my computer is still crashing... Windows 98 here i come =c P

I recently built a new system. AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 4GIG RAM XP Pro SP2 And I keep updating with the incremental Microsoft patches. I have had NO problems whatsoever. It really flies. Perhaps the difference is XPHome vs XPPro. I know several other Poser 5 gurus on this forum also on XP Pro SP2 with AMD processors. ::::: Opera :::::

I am using XP Pro.. let me update again..(?) and see what happens.. maybe its because I only have 1 GIG of RAM.. hmmm.. (cries)

check you page file....i have been told by others it should be set to 1.5 physical RAM, so i.5 gig in your case. ::: og :::

liquid - do a google search. there are ways to strip SP2 from your windows install CD i believe, not sure but i could have sworn i saw them while searching for how to streamline SP2 into my windows xp pro install cd (the exact opposite). btw, many techies recommend you keep your pagefile in powers of 8... so 1536 megs, not 1500. i doubt it makes much of a difference but it cant hurt :)

I am also running a new system. AMD 64 3200 1G ram XP pro sp2 I have no problems at all either. Runs P5 4.1 and P6 just fine. Wish I could be more help!

... just wandering a bit OT here, I only have 768 megs of physical RAM installed - but I do have a fixed swap file of 3,072 megs, and I've never encountered this memory bug thing (in P6) that I keep reading about (yet). Maybe I haven't taxed the limits far enough (I've stopped at 2 character prop-laden hi-quality renders thus far), or maybe this is a contributory factor?

contrary to popular belief, having a gigantic pagefile isnt always a good thing, especially if you have a lot of RAM.

blackhearted, what would you reccommend for 4 gig. It won't let me create a 6 gig page file. I have it set to the max, i think it's a little over 4 gig. could that be slowing me down?

jesus, lol. yeah, i think that with 4 gigs of RAM you would want it using RAM instead of your pagefile, and keep your pagefile smaller. im no expert, but i would think that with so much RAM you would want to discourage windows from much pagefile activity and encourage it to make the most use of RAM. windows is pretty retarded - i have 2 gigs and if i set around a 3 gig pagefile sometimes ill notice that windows is only using 290 or so megs of RAM and like 1.8 gigs of pagefile. this is bad, since your RAM - especially on an athlon 64 - is running at full speed while your pagefile is restricted by your harddrive speed and even with SATA its a pretty bad bottleneck. try experimenting with it - set your pagefile smaller and see how that impacts performance. also, sometimes your pagefile will be in fragments. you can tell because when you hit 'defrag' the green area (unmovable files) will usually bee your paagefile. often through recreating your pagefile/resetting the size it will fragment really badly. what i do to eliminate this if its bad is to turn the page file off entirely (0 megs, or off), defrag the hdd, and then set the page file to your desired size. it should all be in one solid green block.

ugh, can you tell i got a new keyboard? iii eennnd upp tyypinng likkke thiiss. stupid new things. i had thhis old IBM click keyboard for the last 15 years or so (was still serial, lol). rio keeps complaining that it is so loud that my 'clackiness' keeps her awake at night, so i bought a new one with squishy, quiet keys - looks like a flat laptop keyboard. its annoying aas hell, im seconds away from repeatedly sslaaming iit against the wall. sso to clarify the above, i think when you have <768 megs of RAM having a bigger pagefile helps, since some apps need more 'rooom' to work with. but with >1.5-2 gigs of RAM windows acts kindof retarded, as it keeps trying to use the pagefile even though you have plenty of RAM free, and thus it slows down your system. there are plenty of threads and articles you can google that are written by some people who are way more intelligent and experienced than me.. im just saying what worked for myself. optimal pagefile settings have always been a matter of debate. keep in mind that older articles were written by/for people who generally had 256-512 megs of RAM, and in my experience the opposite holds true for thhose with more - especially 4 gigs. geezz, ya lucky bastard, im jealous :) how much did that set you back? most DDR boards only have 4 slots, and 1 gig sticks of DDR are like 6-7x as expensive as 512 meg ones.

I've heard of quite a few programs and games and such that have issues with XP. That's why I refuse to have XP on any of the computers in our home. We are all running Windows 2000 and have had no glitches, hitches or crashes. I just don't like that XP thing at all.

xp isnt so bad. its windows in general i was referring to. win2k is good, but its mainly NT 5, and ive had far more issues with getting hardware to work with 2k than ive ever had with xp. i can imagine its only getting worse - with all the newer hardware out. if you install XP and know what excess services to disable, what tweaks to implement and what garbage to uninstall, you can get what is essentially win2k with much better security and far more multimedia/hardware compatibility... and a bit of speed to boot. on the surface it looks just like 2k. there are definitely benefits of XP pro over win2k. given a choice between XP home and win2k, i think i would stick with win2k.. .at least until longhorn comes out.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2077843

blackhearted you have opened up a new window on this issue for me. It never occured to me that keeping the page file big when you have a lot of RAM would make the stupid OS even stupider! I always assumed that between them, Bill and Poser would use the 2gig of RAM FIRST (i know it can't use the other 2 yet) and then start thrashing the pagefile. Last time I rendered a big animation I saw the RAM usage for Poser maxing out at about 780 MB, so I thought, well, IT MUST NOT NEED MORE THAN THAT when meanwhile is was probably sending work out to the pagefile when I had more than 1gig still avail. I will DEFINATELY manipulate the pagefile as you suggest to try to force it to use the RAM, for goodness sake. I am fortunate to have this rig, although looking back I should have gone for an Athlon with a 1024 L2 cache instead of only 512, as this DOES seem to REALLY matter to Poser. The Mushkin Ram cost me around $175/Gig. ::::: Opera :::::

Windows does use the pagefile indeed, even if you have lots of RAM. But - it does use it cached. The "unused" RAM is just used as a disk cache, which effectively means that swapping to the page file hardly slows down the system. Every modern OS is designed this way, it allows for a much more versatile RAM use than keeping things in dedicated memory. I don't understand why P5 SR 4.1 hangs on an AMD64 with XP Pro SP2. It runs fine and fast on my AMD64 3500+ / 4 GB RAM /XP Pro SP2.

it might be the SR of poser as well. i know i dont have the latest patch, i think i have SR2 or 3 or something. i installed P5 fresh on this machine and it wouldnt run. i took it from my old drive and just copied the whole thing over, and that version runs fine. i dont get it, doesnt make much sense... but im happy i dont have to run it in safe mode or disable DEP. im far from a computer expert, but i would imagine that with dual channel DDR - especially on an athlon 64 system with the on-die memory controller and technology like hypertransport running at 2ghz it would be more advantageous for it to use your physical ram than virtual mem. otherwise whats the point of investing in 4 gigs? might as well just get 1 gig and be done with it. newer SATA 150 drives with 8 megs cache are fast - and 10k rpm wd raptors even faster, but theyre still a huge system bottleneck. its not just windows - PS is pretty dumb too. ive seen it use only 300 or so megs of RAM and 4 gigs of virtual mem :( some apps are a little brighter - like higher end 3D apps allow you to assign how much memory they use and they actually use it. i have coolmon running all the time, so i can easily monitor my ram/pagefile usage, what processes are using it, as well as my fan speeds and system temps on my second monitor. im still pretty disappointed with RAM use in winXP, although its light years better than win9x :) there are tonnes of articles on optimum page file settings and maintenance, as well as little XP tweaks for those with insane amounts of RAM - definitely spend an hour googling them and reading up, might make a difference.

ah svdl - i see wwhat youre saying: that windows just uses the extra RAM momentarily, to seamlessly transfer data to your HDD. makes sense, but it would only work well one way. retrieving the data from VM would be like molasses in comparison to retrieving it from RAM, if there was any randomness to it. in games especially its retrieving the data thats the problem. still i could swear ive used programs that chugged along, and my RAM use didnt go up at all while my virtual meemory skyrocketed. perhaps its application influenced as well? i notice its not a problem on linux. it seems to utilize memory more efficiently, and also dump it far faster/more efficiently. for example if you close a memory-sucking program like poser in windows, you experience a bit of sluggishness for a bit afterwards. say, if you close poser and then open firefox right away. it seems to take windows much too long to dump memory thats no longer in use, or clear the pagefile. i hope longhorn is better, and isnt just another win2k with even more graphical glorification and useless garbage.

Don't hold your breath on that, BH. The next iteration, basically 'Longhorn Lite', does -not- have the new indexed HDD partitionformat scheme.....but it sure has the nifty DRM and the 3D Desktop that requires a Geforce 4 class accelerator to function.... And sympathies on your keyboard. I just lost my trusty IBM to wear and tear, and the keyboard replacing it is...sticky, shall we say? Plus it's next to impossible to find a quality QWERTY keyboard without the sexy slopes and more damnfool 'multimedia experience enhancing' buttons and sliders to get in the way and fail if a fly pisses on them. Be nice if the vendors could keep in mind that there is a solid core of clued users who neither want nor need ticky-tacky window dressing...either in hardware or software.

Retrieving data from the pagefile is usually pretty fast, due to the fact that most of those pagefile data is still cached in RAM: principle of locality! Flushing the pagefile after closing a memory intensive app, yes, I can imagine that slows things down for a moment. I don't know Linux that well, it's very well possible that flushing the pagefile in Linux is deferred (better scheduling).

Attached Link: http://www.osnn.net/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=99

The linked page seems to offer quite a detailed background as to page file operation in general. I've always had a lot of respect for Mark Russinovich (PC Magazine), and I would think that the information given here is probably very accurate indeed.

Liquid-angel, your post has attracted the heavy hitters! Thanks! And...i hope you can get the damn application to launch. Don't be shy to post your latest attempt back here..these guys are persistent. Meanhwile....can you guys give your opinions on two things: 1) certain discussions lately suggest that on AMD chips the difference between the 1024 L2 cache as opposed to 512 L2 cache is not trivial, but rather 'large', out of proportion large. Theoretically, does this seem possible? 2) given a system that optimizes on RAID-0 and throws everything on the RAID volume...OS, pagefile, poser.exe, runtime and pz3, does it make sense to add in any sophistication, such as a separate drive or even two drives and place some/one of those five elements OFF the RAID array? [note; not intending to draw comments on data security/backup; assume that is handled separately] Thanks for the mutual 'chewing' on the pagefile caching. ::::: Opera :::::

How odd. I've had better success making hardware and software work better with 2000 than with XP. I guess I'm just weird or something.

"1) certain discussions lately suggest that on AMD chips the difference between the 1024 L2 cache as opposed to 512 L2 cache is not trivial, but rather 'large', out of proportion large. Theoretically, does this seem possible?" it would depend on the chip. ive heard the exact opposite - actually. going so far as suggesting that the 256k L2 cache sempron was pretty much equal with the 512k amd64. in fact if anyone were in the market for a new machine right now i would recommend an amd sempron 3100 on a budget board - it would do perfectly well until the next gen dual core processors arrive and theyre dirt cheap right now. basically an athhlon64 processor with half the cache and 64 bit features disabled, and it performs equal in most apps/games with its big brother for half the price. dale - this is the keyboard i picked up (although for regular price, grr). as far as modern keyboards go its far less annoying than anything else i could find. i still miss my old IBM click keyboards - i actually have several of them but rio gets pissed at me if i use them. she says its like trying to sleep beside a machinegun nest. keys are nice and flat like a laaptop keyboard, and the stupid multimedia keys are unobtrusively hidden, which is the next best thing to not having them there at all. im getting used to it slowly... its requiring me to learn how to type with a bit more 'finesse' as opposed to brute force like on 20 year old keyboards :) longhorn has a 3d desktop? jesus, wtf? i always disable all thhe stupid graphical glorification on an OS to make it run even faster, the last thing i need is 24/7 direct3D or openGL processing sucking up my resources. the one thing ive read lately thats REALLY intrigued me, btw, is that people are working on alternate uses for video cards. ive always thought thhat it was a tragic waste that whenever you werent playing half-life2 or doom3, your uber video card just sat there dormant. these days the higher end ones are as powerful as some PCs, heh - with beefy GPUs, tonnes of RAM and insane floating point processing performance. its about time someone gave them a use during desktop work, as a co-processor for some tasks (and it will finally give PCI express a purpose beyond marketing hype). i look forward to seeing what comes of it. cheers, -gabriel

No not shy.. still does not work after installing P5 Sr 4.1.. increased Page file to no avail.. like I said I am gonna just keep it on my Old computer.. It is slow and is sucking the life out of it but It still works.. I'll just have to wait until Cl makes the darn fix i gues.. maybe its my Graphic card.. I have the PCI express w/ 256 RAM .. HMMM.. prolly not but at this point I am willing to go far fetched to explain the reason why it doesn't work rather than get upset.. =c P

BTW.. i am impressed at the ppl who have started posting to this thread.. never, anywhere I have posted, has it drawn this many people! YaY.. lol my first "Mega-Post" lmao

Actually, another thing that may have use for the PCI-E bandwidth is anothe gamers toy that could have some application elsewhere. A company has taped out a prototype of a Physics Processing Unit, similar to the GPU in current graphic boards. If I remember correctly, it works with a modified version of the Havok physics engine, and offloads all the number crunching from the CPU. If it eventually works as advertised, it could open up the possibility of adding actual ragdoll physics, true gravity and micro-polygon collision to apps like Poser, Vue, Bryce, etc. Nice keyboard btw. But I'm old fashioned; I -like- machine gun nests.... ;)