Alright, now I am getting mad. When I first got P5 it didn't lock up at all, now when I try to use more than two figures in a scene it locks up about 60 to 75% of the time. If it is the same scene but I am changing the camera view or pose, then P5 is almost a certain to lock up. Is there anything that I can do to stop this? When it does lock up, I almost always either have to restart the computer or just go away and now do anything, for a few hours until poser can shut itself down.... Thanks Butch PS I have more than enough ram, running xp, have the latest version of p5....

No such thing as enough RAM. I have the max and I lock up plenty. CTRL/ALT/Delete during a freeze. Scroll to poser and see how much RAM you're really using and remember a number to stay below. Tons of things lock up P5. 3 loaded V3s will do it.

Whoops that might be it. The scenes that I have been trying to do all involve multiple figures, usually at least 2 V3's, a couple of Daz Girls, and assorted other characters....

Here's another personal bug...double clicking on a pz3 to open after a freeze and reboot will draw a freeze (do not understand why)! Right click and hit open on Pz3 sometimes skips this annoyance. Also when changing camera, you can make invisible all that is not in the viewer. This can clip you down under the max with no scene loss. Quick in hierarchy editor. I'm experienced and have at least 1000freezes to my credit...? Blowing your RAM and processor off with compressed air will make a few more renders.

Don't forget that some hair pieces can be almost as high res as the figures themselves, especially some of neftis' hair. Using fast or box tracking instead of full tracking can help. My P5 is pretty well-behaved now, but did go through a period where it was completely locking up on any scene with more than one figure, even locking out keyboard and mouse input. The solution turned out to be a new motherboard, so I hope that isn't your problem.

Use CorrectReference either the free one or the Pro version to make sure that your text references are optimized. Also, I have serious slowdown problems with PZ3's over 100 megs

richardson: "Scroll to poser and see how much RAM you're really using and remember a number to stay below" Scroll where? And how do I know how much RAM I'd need for any specific scene to render...? thanx in advance kmw

Could be a corrupted Poser.rsr, I've had some trouble like you describe. Reinstalling the latest service pack often helps.

I know this thread was started last May, but it seemed the place to ask my question: there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to when P5 is locking on me during renders. A scene with 2 or 3 characters renders just fine, but when I want to do a medium or tight close-up on one of them, the 'puter locks so bad that all I can do is hit the reset button. One at hand is a good example. I have a David figure with the medium res texture from DAZ, Actual Eyes, Digiport's genital figure, a chair and 2 wall props. That's it. This same scene with a V3 character and several additional props rendered just fine with a P4 render, shadows and Production quality @ 1280x992 and 350 dpi, but when I try to zoom in on David, I get lock-ups. I've tried re-building the scene from scratch, reducing the production quality and displacement settings, turning off all shadows and deleting any texture maps for parts of the characterthat didn't show, but still no joy. Can any of you Poser sages give me any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Spire

Wish I could answer that. But,,,since P6 my lockups have dropped 85%. No lie. It's a lot smarter than P5 (which just left you with no choices at all). Remember, the closer you go, the more power you're using. I did a few with nothing but a face and maxed out.

I've been holding out on upgrading to P6 for a couple of reasons. First, I'm gonna need a larger hard-drive already since Poser takes up nearly all the space I have now (20 gigs), and second, I've been scanning various forums and such to see if most of the bugs are getting worked out. I also need to drop another strip of RAM in, I think, but I'm wondering if the renders don't use the graphics card instead of RAM. I used to get a "You are almost out of virtual memory" warning early on, but now I don't get that at all. The 'puter just freezes, and I'm hosed. But thanks for the reply anyhow. Spire

P5 is as good as dead compared to P6. It still uses a lot of RAM and renders with the cpu butit's never been so stable.

I was a reluctant P6 user (I still load all new downloads into my P5 Runtime linked to P6) until I tried animating in Firefly (Production Quality). I never got past 8 or 9 frames in P5 before it would freeze up, but in P6 I haven't had a freeze up yet.

Welcome to my world. CTRL ATL DEL has become second nature with me when I use Poser.

Heh! I wish I COULD ctrl alt del when Poser freezes on me! My lock-ups are so bad that the reset button is the only option. E-Frontiers does suggest reducing the acceleration settings on a graphics card if you're having lock-ups, and I tried it, but after I did, all the checks, pluses and minuses beneath my libraries disappeared. The only way to restore them was to re-install P5. Grrrrrrr!

Been there, and am finding ways to crash P6 now. My prob on this is my pc. Ram and motherboard (fried a cpu on it). I would check ramm compatability. Then swap file settings. I'm just holding off for 64bit.

Okay, now I'm at a loss. Now I can't render ANYTHING without Poser locking up, not even a single figure against a blank background. I've tried uninstalling and re-installing the program, increased the size of my swap file (just in case), defragging, etc., etc., but nothing worked. Any suggestions? (Other than upgrading to P6 which I don't think my system can handle at present, and I don't have the $$ for hardware upgrades.) The thing is, I've rendered some complex scenes in the past with no problem, and now I can't render ANYthing.

Spire

I would get someone to(physically) look at it.

Ok, how do you allocated Virtual Memory in general, and to P5 in specific? Working with XP Pro.

You don't allocate virtual memory to an application in Windows, that's Mac OS 9 speak. Windows dynamically allocates virtual memory as needed. This default behaviour works pretty well when running most applications, but not when running Poser. If Windows needs to expand the swapfile, Poser must wait too long for the memory it requested and crashes. If you increase the minimum size of the swapfile, Windows probably won't need to expand it, and Poser will keep on working. You can change the minimum and maximum amount of virtual memory by right-clicking the My Computer icon, Properties, tab Advanced. Click the Settings button in the Performance frame, click the tab Advanced, now you can set new minimum and maximum values for the swap file. Recommended minimum size is 1.5 times physical RAM, if you're low on RAM (less than 512 MB) you'd better choose a higher number. Maximum size should be equal or greater than minimum size. A tip; if you have more than one physical disk, then set a swapfile on each disk. Windows will determine which swapfile is fastest and try to use that one when swapping out some memory (and this happens quite often, several times per second on a system that's low on memory!). Hope this helps, Steven.

I've discovered that there is a direct correlation between amount of free hard drive space and the way Poser 5 functions. After a fresh install with minimal files installed, Poser 5 works like a dream. I have a 40 gig hard drive. I find if I keep free space to about 16 to 18 gigs or more, that Poser seems to work better. Currently I have 14.2 gigs of free space, and I notice a difference in how Poser is working; it seems "sluggish". Does anyone know why this is?

I can think of two possible reasons. 1) NTFS performance drops when more than 2/3 of the disk/partition is in use. That fits with the numbers you quote. Solution: get a bigger harddisk. 2) Fragmentation. The free space you have could be one big chunk, or it could be lots of little chunks. The latter is called fragmentation. It can considerably slow down your disk system. Solution: use a defragmentation tool on a regular basis. The defragmentation tool that comes with Windows does the job, though I prefer Diskeeper (better defragmentation and nice scheduling options).

svdl, so with 2048 of RAM, = 3072min>3584max on virtual? I'm much lower than that, now.

Well, I've got 4 GB RAM, and 12 GB of virtual distributed over 3 disks on my Athlon64 1 GB ram, 3 GB virtual on my AhtlonXP2700+ 1.5 GB RAM, 3 GB virtual on my P4 2.8 HTT FSB800. Min and max are the same. Main advantage: no fragmentation of the swapfile. When Windows has to expand the swapfile, fragmentation can kick in. When you shut down Windows, the expanded part is deleted and your swapfile goes back to minimum size. No single process on WinXP can use more than 2 GB at a time (under normal circumstances. There are exceptions). Rendering often comes pretty close to those 2 GB (I've seen 1.8 GB memory use in a Poser render, 1.9 GB in a Vue render). So other processes must be swapped out. Parts of your rendering app also get swapped out, including data. A better rule of thumb is: your swap file should be at least the size of all the processes you run at the same time. So yes, with 2048 RAM I'd advise a virtual memory size of more than 2 GB.

Lessee...I've got a Compaq Athalon laptop with 512 MB of RAM, 11.6 GB out of 32GB available on the hard drive, I'm running P5 and working all my files from a USB HD that has over 50 GB of free space, and I've had the last two images I've worked on refuse to render at all when I use default lighting, nothing special. Neither of these PZ3's go over 51 MB in size. I even installed a RAM cleaner and that seems to have made the situation worse. I'll dig around and see what else I may need to do after following the above advice. Thanks everyone!

What gets me is that, without making any systems changes--hardware OR software, and actually reducing the number of files I had loaded into P5's Runtime folder--I went from being able to render multiple-figure and props pics to barely able to render anything. Not only that, occasionally when I attempt to load individual characters (based on V3, M3, and David)my computer now locks. I've run a boatload of diagnostics, and everything checks out as working fine, again both hardware and software. Deleting and reloading Poser, thinking maybe it had somehow become corrupted, also did nothing to ease or eliminate the problem. I am SO confused!

Now I'm to the point where I can't render ANYthing larger than a postage stamp without P5 locking my system. This after a hardware upgrate so that I've now over a gig of RAM, loading Poser afresh and so on. Does the video card have anything to do with rendering, because that's the only thing I haven't done. And I'm already planning on upgrading to P6 after the first of the year. Doesn't look like I have much of a choice anymore!

Spire, The video card should have the lastest upgrades to its driver. I hate to see you still suffering with this... Check system defrag. There should be no red zones. Check for worms. Google for free diagnostics... Check for an overabundance of tempfiles...Cannot specify here. Ask for help. Check for available disc space. Dumb but I maxed 180 gigs last year. Is your pc clean? Have you opened it and can see no debris? You've done a clean reinstall? Saved your Runtime and uninstalled,,,deleted Poser cashe file out of windows explorer, then rebooted...reinstalled poser and its service releases? " First, I'm gonna need a larger hard-drive already since Poser takes up nearly all the space I have now (20 gigs)"... No way to save a Runtime with no available space...this might be the clincher. Did you get more HDrive? Maybe santa can rescue you?

Thanks for the response! I'm using an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 Pro video card, and the driver is the latest available. I defrag on a weekly basis (or anytime the system hangs up, just in case). Worms I'll have to check for, but I don't think so. I do a search for all *.tmp files on a regular basis and delete them. I have 90% of a 120 Gig HD available at present. The place that installed the new HD+RAM did a thorough cleaning of the inside of my case. Did a completely clean install of Poser+latest service release...twice. I even saw that Poser 5 has a problem with part of the Win XP SR2 that protects against possible virus intrusions, and disabled this for Poser only (and since I uninstalled the Content Room, I don't go online with Poser anyway.) I'm beginning to think Poser 6 is my only hope. Anyone know how much functionality there is with the demo that's posted? Thanks again!

I'd start a new thread for that last question. This one is 6 feet under..;))

The graphics card should have nothing to do with P5's rendering capabilities. The same with P6 - P6 can use OpenGL in the preview window, but the final render runs on the CPU. Reinstalling Poser didn't help, apparently. Have you tried reinstalling Windows? Not an upgrade reinstall, a clean reinstall? A bitwise copy of the old HD to the new HD is probably what the shop that upgraded your machine did. I've seen computers get very sluggish and unresponsive after this kind of upgrade. A full reinstall of the OS did wonders.

No, they couldn't have done that. My old drive was completely fried and inaccessible. From what you said of the CPU makes me think that THAT is what I need to upgrade next. At present I'm running on a 1.8 gig Intel Celeron. And richardson is right, I think. Time for a new thread?

A Celeron 1.8 may not be the fastest CPU around these days, it still should be capable of rendering decent P5 scenes. My Athlon 1400 didn't have too much trouble, even with larger scenes containing multiple figures. And yes, a new thread might be a good idea.

See the new thread I started at Poser 5 Lockups and Stability Issues.