i don't understand why you'd want to use tar.gz files in windows :) "yep, been there done that (tried it on a 5gb real drive. crashed windows in a record time of 10hrs.)" yes i had allocated only 4gig of a 60 ig dive to windows and didn't take that into account when rendering and saved everything rendred in apo on that partition :) i'm really not interested on working on windows platforms, it's very rare to crash linux box, though i have manged that too quite often recently. i have now another 500 memory installed which brings me up to 1 gig of memory which should solve that problem as i want to make a longer film clip for my tutorial,probably using xaos output for the base image.