Vue 5 Invite has many problems, sure when it Renders it does good. But on the whole its a waste of good money. Technical support is lacking a week  is way too long to come back with questions rather than anaswers.

Prolem 1 importinting poser files with latest upgrade, did not work. Solution reistall Vue it worked 20% of the time, otherwise Vue crashed

Poblem 2 Scene was created saved it before rendereng, Vue crashed. Was able to reload scene and render. More edits crashed.

I use Poser which always renders, Maya no problem. People at VUE get your eggs in a row Im sick of watsing my time.

Vue is a potentialy a good bit of Software, if it was freeware EG try Terragarden but for $500 no way.

My personal time is valued I dont have time to waste, this is one bad Product

Wow! This is worrying!

I just upgraded to Vue 5 esprit and have had a couple of crashes already that I thought were down to having Poser6 open at the same time.

Is this a big problem with Vue5 then???

I bought the original vue 4 first and am up to vue 5 infinite. The random crashes have got less but still happen. It's part of vue. But on the other hand you can bring in many more figures in vue than you can in poser and the renderer is better, plus you can have scenary and vegitation, and the ecosystems are great. It has always been unstable though. It's part of vue life. Love esther

<<  Is this a big problem with Vue5 then???  >>

No & no!

<<  this is one bad Product  >>

No it isn't, it's an extremely competant product which has a few minor irritants, many of which may be overcome by care.  You cannot compare Vue with Terragen, because although TG is a very good landscape generator, that's all it does in it's current version.

How much memory do you have?  2meg is ideal, 1 meg and you may well struggle occasionally.  How much of that memory is actually available to Vue - ie is your system clogged up with uneccessary background processes before you even start the programme?  How many icons are sitting in your system tray?  Each one of those is using system resources which are therefore not available to Vue.

Don't import Poser objects as PZ3, save them as .VOB first and then bring them in, and remember to "collapse identical materials" as you do so.

The last upgrade did have a problem, I believe that several people dowloaded a version which was bugged before the problem was fixed.  Try downloading again and re-updating.

I am running the latest update, using Poser 6 and rarely have problems.  Judging from the number of Vue pictures in the gallery which contain Poser images, I am not alone.

Quote -
Don't import Poser objects as PZ3, save them as .VOB first and then bring them in, and remember to "collapse identical materials" as you do so.

What Lord Wexford means is don't import as PZ3 straight into your scene if you are having resource issues, import the PZ3 into a new scene, save it as a VOB from there and then you can load this VOB into your scene.

I am more than delighted with Vue Infinite!  I've been using Vue since version 4; wasn't thrilled with 5 but do love Infinite.

Your crashing may be due to your windows setting - in your control panel, under System - click on Advanced, then on Performance - Settings,  click on Advanced under Visual Performance - your Virtual Memory could be the problem.  Mine is set at 3536 MB and does not crash.

I import pz3s, leave Poser 6 open and with the latest Vue update, if I need to go back into Poser to adjust something, it updates in Vue as well - a great time saving feature!

Hope you get your problems solved because it's a great program!

:)
Irene

I work with Poser 5 and 6  and Vue 5 Infinite all the time. I bring in Native Poser files with dynamic hair. I use basically nudes so I do not have clothing to worry about. I have never converted them to vobs. They do not crash on my and the import perfectly other than changes I make to the hair.

I have almost never had a system crash and only a few low resource messages since I started using it where I had plenty of time to shut it down and reopen it. I am using the latest update and it works great. I have never crashed during a render. Now I do not render huge files. If I want the image to be large, 16"x20" at 300 dpi, I use Genuine Fractals PrintPro 4.1 in Photoshop after I have rendered the image.

Quote -
... remember to "collapse identical materials" as you do so.

If you do that, the figure update no longer works if you need to alter the pose in Poser. This is very annoying.

Please take all this advice to heart and consider making some minor tweaks to your system and following a few simple steps when using Poser figures.  VUE is a superior product as it does what other affordable programs cannot.  Don't give up, just work around the problem!

When I came to Vue, I had the same reaction as Andrewe : it did not work as I expected it to ! I compared Vue with a skateboard powered by a Maserati engine : no good for pulling my truck to next town, and i got angry about "wasted" time. There was one real bug which hindered me to do what I wanted. I found a work-around, did my work, e-on cleaned the bug. But, for my "wasted time & money" opinion, I was wrong as wrong could be, and voluntarily admit my error. Vue is not a pocket calculator where one hits the equals key. The Vue interface, simple at first glance, may lead to mistake it for such :-) Vue seems more like a formula1 engine, with dozens of adjustments to tune, depending on WHAT I want it to do. I got no team to do that in my place - but got the manual, tutorials, and friends on forums to ask, and learn to tune and drive the beast. To continue the comparison, I can use it for skateboard, railway engine, airplane, racing car, or as a truck. Required settings are not the same... Most of the adjustment inputs are not limited (one may want to try unusual things), so there are many ways to have it hickup. Driving it aint button-pushing, neither : once I got the engine tuned, I could run straight into the next wall, or stall on fire-up. If things don't work one way 'round, I'll do it the other way, and it works. A Poseruser will use differents ways than the architect, the cinema animator or the moods artist. At the beginning, I had to tune down to simple settings and do simple things, then work up from there. My pocket calculator approach simply was no good. Using Vue for a year or so, I know, let's say, about one fifth of it's possibilities, and discover others all time. If e-on put in fail-safe mecanisms, so that Vue worked like a cd-player, it would lose many of it's phantastic possibilities. Vue is not a bad product - look at the gallery, what people do with it - and, many payjob renderings simply are not displayed here in the gallery, for copyright reasons and such. There are some bugs, yes. In most cases, somebody got a work-around. More often, hickups are not hard bugs, but due to something untuned somewhere, or feeding Vue the wrong way . If one explains what happened, others can try to find out, why it happened. Keep on, it's worth ! :-)

I'm working with Vue 5 Easel and thinking of upgrading to V5I to get that tuneability back.  Vue 4 was like you describe, but not useable with P6. V5i has so many fantastic feature, I couldn't say bad things about them.

The E-on lack of customer support is a real thing, though.  I've run into that on more than one occasion.  However--forums like these here and elsewhere more than make up for E-on's lacks in knowledge or response.  Asking questions always gets a response around here./

One thing to always remember about ALL computer aplications:  They all have quirks and bugs!  All of them.  Because of our limitations as human beings, we all fall short of writing the perfect app. 

Just be patient.  Ask tons of questions, and try not to get frutrated.  We're ALL afloat in the same boat.  Even if it's a leaky dingy, we can all help bail.  ^__^ V,,

On the other hand, if the wheel fell off your new car, would you say, "Oh well, all cars have some problem or other, one has to live with it"?

Man, honestly.  This is an amazing piece of software. I've had crashes, but I have crashes with many programs...ones a lot less capable than Vue. I've never once regretted moving to Vue...and will upgrade to V6I without hesitation.

I don't regret buying it and will buy vue 6 when it comes out. Love esther

What, without even knowing what the features will be?

It's no wonder software houses are able to release buggy software when the customer base is so uncritical.

Quote - Vue is not a pocket calculator where one hits the equals key.
The Vue interface, simple at first glance, may lead to mistake it for such :-)

Perfect analogy IMO.

When I 1st started with VUE5i.  I crashed it regularly.
Now ..one year on...I can comfortably drive the VUE beast smoothly, without any crashes.
IMHO... with 9 out of 10 crashes..the problem is between the chair & the keyboard.

I agree with GPFrance's post %100.

I belong to those who having frequent crashes although I tested everything to make it more solid. The videocard could be a problem but I can't install another into my laptop. Despite all the extreme stress losing much work/rendertime I still love Vue becuse: 1) The Ecosys; this is really incredible. 2) GI/GR render  option. Making Bryce deserts I went over to Vue to render fat, steamy greenery and jungles :-D ...so I forgive Vue's flimsy performance. (on my not to update laptop)

Well being a long time Vue user I can say that Infinite is a great program if you ignore E-on's hype. The problem is E-on hype Infinite as a pro package, but it is far from having pro standard reliability...good reliability but not pro.
When you buy a pro package workflow is of paramount importance...finding workarounds isn't good for workflow.

I personally think Infinite is worth the price...if you ignore the hype that is.

Cheers

I am having the same problems in importing Poser 6 figures/Pz3s.  One day it worked fine and then next day  it would tell me  it was unable to load any Pz3s.  No changes to anything.  Vue 4 still works fine even without the latest mods.  Vue5 (not 5infinite) tells me that I'm out of memory and I'm running 2 Gigs of Ram on a new Dell.  I have managed some work arounds  such as grouping figures as single meshs.   The converter program for files older than Vue4 worked once and then told me I had no more disk space (100 Gigs left on that disk).  It then quit alltogther telling me I had no more disk space left.  Oh yeah.. I don't have a Vue older than 4 that I used for any of these files.    But.......my main question is;  did anybody do  BETA testing of Vue 5 with all these bugs?   These forums are a GOD SEND.   I don't do animation and V5 and when it works does excellent but  as a cash paying  (OK credit cards also) purchaser you shouldn't have to "work around the problem". 

It's kind of like the Maytag refridgerator I bought that came to my door with a long list of "upgrades"  that needed to be done after I got it.  The fridge went back to the business that day. 

 E-on needed to prepare a little more me thinks!

Well after a few days now of trying out Vue5 esprit I can say without question that I've wasted my money on this "BIG TIME".

memory warnings with polygon count at just over a million, crashes before I get to 1.5 million polygons, it's just crap!

My scene comprises of 2 terrains, a water plain, sunlight, 1 other light, the Seatraveller from kaol and a castle object, nothing fancy and it just crashes everytime without fail.

I even tried to bring in a poser ship instead, pauliprop's craweel and Vue just shut down straight away, no warning!

I thought Poser6 was bad when it first came out but this is worse, biggest waste of my money ever.

For the technically minded my system specs are 3.4GHz P4 hyperthreaded, x600 radeon graphics [256Meg PCI Express], huge hard drive and 1 Gig of RAM.

If I'd bought a car or fridge or something else as bad as this I'be onto trading standards for compensation, I might just do that anyway!

Sorry all you people that think it's great but for me it's next to useless!

I love Vue, but I hate the way they handle updates, customer service, and Cornucopia3D.  It really cheeses me that they release updates before they are ready.  5.09 doesn't work for me, but you can't use anything from their #$% store unless you install the update.

In short, I guess you could say I love Vue, but I'm getting to really hate E-on. 

Good points.
Luckily I have no need for C3D or eon support.

I could do without C3D, and generally don't need support.  (Except to buy the program.  I guess I should have been warned when I had trouble even buying the program at their Web site.  Usually companies make it easy to give them your money.  ;-)

But a couple of times now, I've been caught by updates that don't work correctly, or break previous functionality.  In one case, I was told I had to remove Vue entirely and reinstall, because the update they released was corrupt.  It's really aggravating.  It's gotten to the point where I'm afraid to install updates. 

No problems from me, infinite has worked without a problem ever since I have had it installed.

Just in case you are interested my last animation was just over 6000 frames and it rendered all of them without a problem.

Sorry some people are having problems I dont know what the answer is, but I can tell you from my own perspetive I shall be getting vue 6 when it comes out.

Sorry to hear others are having problems.  I was having a very specific memory problem up to the 5.08 release that related to working with other specific applications performing other operations on my system at the same time as Vue was doing certain operations.  Applying a couple of windows updates has improved its performance recently and it now recognises my video card which it didn't used to.  Now its running quite happily on 512Meg of RAM for me.  It really is worth persevering with e-on's tech support because they do want to fix problems.

thefixer - The problems you are having remind me of the problems I used to have when Vue 5 just came out.

Did you install the latest update ?

Quote - [IMHO... with 9 out of 10 crashes..the problem is between the chair & the keyboard.

I don't agree. Vue's crashes are inconsistent. You can do something that crashes the program, then start it again, do the same thing, and it will work. Now, you can say that it's the user's fault not to realize that to prevent crashes one must close Vue every five minutes and start it again so that it can untangle its memory - but this is not normal behaviour and one should expect the program to function as advertised.

Hi, well I used to find when it was crashing a lot that it was often when I tried to move an object too quickly. But the newest vue is much more stable. Love esther

The problem with Vue crashing is really annoying but to my experience, there are only two reasons for crashes and they are both easy to avoid:

(1) 99% of all crashes result from working too quickly in Vue. Vue is a little like an old grandma: Rush her and she will fall. If you try to continue working on your scene while Vue is still recalculation your latest changes (new objects, new materials, eco-systems etc.), the program will lock up. Give it a little time, and it will be perfectly stable.

(2) Very rarely, you will import an object that is too complicated for Vues preview renderer. Disable OpenGL, and it will not crash any more (easiest way to do it: click "yes" when the program ask you whether you want to restart in Compatibility mode after a crash). Problem is that you will get your objects represented in simple boxes in compatibility mode which makes positioning and working with it almost impossible. Reducing the number of polygons will help greatly.

I do admit that treating a program like some feeble patient is quite annoying and I do not understand why programmers seem to be unable to solve the problem. This is definitely a drawback on the program. Yet, Vue has so many strengths that I still prefer it over most other 3d programs. And once you realize what causes your crashes and how to avoid them, it's amazingly stable!

What i dont understand is how you can export Poser imported files to VOB... as far as i know they are locked to avoid copyright infrigments so that wont work.

Quote - What i dont understand is how you can export Poser imported files to VOB... as far as i know they are locked to avoid copyright infrigments so that wont work.

In Poser you can't export as VOB.

In Vue, you can save an imported PZ3 as a VOB.

Well seems my post brought a few comments out. Dont get me wrong I love the pictures Vue generates, when it works it works (this is my third version I have brought). I do generally import poser files and then save as VOB been doing this fore a while. So heres the funny thing, I had been loading this poser figure last week and crashed everytime, this week after finnishing work I tried again twice it crashed then it loaded (WT@#$^) I saved it as VOB as soon as I could. I have loaded into a scene I have been working on for a week it now rendering( this picture should have only taken a couple of hours to get finnished but due to all the crashes its taken me a week to get to a render). I will post the pic when rendered in the Vue gallery. Thanks all!!!!

Quote - In Vue, you can save an imported PZ3 as a VOB.

But then you lose the benefit of being able to update the figure in Poser if required.

Quote - > Quote - In Vue, you can save an imported PZ3 as a VOB.

But then you lose the benefit of being able to update the figure in Poser if required.

And how often do you need to that?
I'm not surprised your VUE crashes.
If you failed to get the pose right in the 1st place..then you can just use the replace object feature & re-import the altered pz3..simple really.

Quote - I do admit that treating a program like some feeble patient is quite annoying and I do not understand why programmers seem to be unable to solve the problem.

You may find Vue has old legacy code that can't be removed as it breaks the program. This isn't unusual in the industry as many old 3D programs suffer the same problem, be it 3DS Max, Maya etc. This is probably why anybody who has used (lets say for the sake of argument) Vue 3 sometimes run across the same bugs in Vue 5. If you look E-on have taken a wise approach by including features via "modules", that way they can be worked on independantly, BUT if there are problems in the core program then there will always be problems that may gravitate to the "modules"...well until the programers sort them out.

Cheers

quote: "Posted Thu, Apr 27, 2006 5:36 am Quote - " Quote - "In Vue, you can save an imported PZ3 as a VOB." But then you lose the benefit of being able to update the figure in Poser if required. " And how often do you need to that? I'm not surprised your VUE crashes. If you failed to get the pose right in the 1st place..then you can just use the replace object feature & re-import the altered pz3..simple really. " Fine unless you have made a ton of texture changes in vue that you would like to keep. Love esther

Make sure your objects are correctly placed BEFORE texturing.

Quote - You may find Vue has old legacy code that can't be removed as it breaks the program. This isn't unusual in the industry as many old 3D programs suffer the same problem, be it 3DS Max, Maya etc.

Sorry, but I completely disagree. Crashes in V5I are not caused by "old legacy code that can't be removed". Most crashes are caused by the program trying to do too much things at the same time(background threading plus new changes).  Nothing would be easier than putting a short-term stop to the program when an user is bringing it to its limits. And what concerns other 3d programs: I can't say anything about Maya, but I've been knowing 3ds max since version R3 and comparing its stability with Vue can only be a joke. (Which, of course, it should be because there must be a reason while one program costs ten times more than another.)

If you want to compare Vue's stability with other programs, you have to look at similar applications on the market, e.g. Bryce. And in that case, Vue has very bad cards. I used Bryce for about five years before I moved on to Vue and I can't remember Bryce crashing just once (while I had at least three Vue crashes at my first day).

All this being said, I still prefer Vue to Bryce because stability is only one argument when working with a 3d program and there are more than enough plusses that outweight this one (with some tricks and experience avoidable) minus.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - In Vue, you can save an imported PZ3 as a VOB.

But then you lose the benefit of being able to update the figure in Poser if required.

And how often do you need to that?
I'm not surprised your VUE crashes.
If you failed to get the pose right in the 1st place..then you can just use the replace object feature & re-import the altered pz3..simple really.

How often? The whole time. I work on comics. Having set up the figures for panel one, I then need to change the poses before rendering the same figures in panel two, and so on and so on.

Because Vue is so weak at interpreting Poser materials, I have to change every material that involves either reflection or specularity, which may be a lot. So I really don't want to have to retexture after every import if I can avoid it.

The Poser update feature was one of the main reasons I bought V5i. I'm a bit disappointed at how termperamental it is.

So you're not surprised my Vue crashes because I use an advertised feature of the program?

I see your points now. I can understand that you are frustrated with VUE.
You may well be that 1 in 10 that has a legit complaint.

And NO...I am not surprised that "Vue crashes because you use an advertised feature of the program".
It's not uncommon for marketing types to "overhype" their products.

Incidentally, I can also tell you why Vue crashes a lot for me, and it's nothing to do with doing things quickly. It's because Vue leaches a chunk of resources with every operation, the size of the loss varying with the complexity of the scene. Thus, with a scene containing more than one hi-res figure, with some hi-res textures, you may have at most 30 operations before Vue inexorably crashes. These operations can be anything, moving an object, moving the camera, even deleting an object loses you resources. And this is even with undo limited to one (the minimum).

So it becomes a game of trying to guess how long you can last before you have to close Vue, start it again and reload your work. Hang on too long and it crashes. It's like playing "chicken".

I have NEVER NEVER had to use any other program that behaved in this way.

Another frequent source of crashes is the material editor, especially applying a texture node (bitmap) in the function editor. I always save before attempting this.

Its just so annoying that it crashes so often, I save frequently but even then it crashes and the last work is lost another 15 minutes wasted. I was monitoring memory useage yesterday loading one >obj whose size was 57k, Vue used 250MB to do that operation, when done it slowly realeased the memory. It would appear to me that the memory allocation stack may be causing the problem.

There are certainly issues with memory leaks IMO. I have posted about this in the past.
There seems to be an issue with VUE not releasing memory.
I've said many times that I believe most legit crashes are memory related.

I've also heard somewhere that  VUE is fussy with what type of ram you use i.e: not likeing certain types of dual channel ram.
So If your comfortable playing around with your BIOS. You could try disable dual channel mode (depends on your motherboard) & see how your VUE runs.

This type of issue is not unique to VUE however.

Cheers.

There was an interview with one of the CGI guys working on the New Captain Scarlet series who said "I hate all 3d applications, they all fail at critical moments", or something of that effect.

I've been banging my head against this stuff for almost a decade and sadly I just cant argue with him.

Welcome to hell!

It would depend, I would like to kmow fro Vue which progamming laungue they use, god help us if is "C" there would lie the problem. Even so if thet was the case, they should have fixed it by now, and given another update, which they have not. I thik e-on is probably a very small bunch of people probably relying on one or two programmers who dont have the time to fix bugs. My advice to them fix it or die. You must know they observe these forums. I myself will not buy another VUe product until this one works. I have no Idea how many products they sell, but judging from the feedback from this thread, its a few. VUE look listen get it sorted.

Vue's development team has fixed several bugs since the first release of both Vue 5 and Vue Infinite. Since you just got Vue recently, you may not be aware of the many updates released by e-on, especially since the launch of Cornucopia 3D at the end of last year.

A lot of these updates are available for beta testers only (as they sometimes introduce new issues) but  the list of issues fixed would look impressive if put together into a single page.

The developers are aware of most of the issues discussed here. They (or their management) do read the forums. And eventually, they do fix issues (that is, when they can find a solution... which is not always possible in a timeframe we would be comfortable with).

Just look at the 'infamous blue gunk', or the alpha turning white in volumetric lights to name a few issues - they were resolved eventually.

Finally, remember that they have to balance the following :

• fix bugs on current versions of their products ( Vue 5, Vue Infinite, Vue Easel, Ozone, Xtream)
• develop the new line of products (Vue 6 ?)
• not release updates too early (to avoid adding new issues)
• not release updates too late

Memory management and stability is a big one.

Yes - Vue crashes if you do too many things too quickly. Especially if OpenGL preview is turned on.

They attempted to create a preview as detailed as possible (with texture, lighting effects, etc...). I haven't seen that level of preview in many applications. Carrara, for example, has an improved OpenGL preview (still not as detailed as Vue's) and no 'live' preview of the final render.

That kind of preview comes with a heavy price in term of memory management. Yes again - there are certainly memory leaks (and they keep fixing them as they find them).

In the meantime, you can significantly improve your experience with Vue by taking some simple steps :

• disable openGL preview (I did until it works better)
• reduce the number of 'undo' (I found I rarely need more than 1 or 2 levels anyway)
• reduce the size of textures in imported objects (especially poser models)
• reduce the geometry of imported objects (especially xfrog trees)
• save often
• from time to time, save as a different name (version 1, version 2, etc)

I haven't seen a crash in months after applying this kind of small steps.

Only problem i have ever had with Vue 5 I barring memory shortages when i had 256M is when i have a busy scene and then decide to delete something out of it.I find it easier to increase the poly count then to reduce it,thats buggy if i ever heard it.

Just to add my bit

I use Vue 5 Pro and it crashes all the time, materials editor, moving objects, it even crashed on the crash screen, it's such a wonderful program, I don't want to give up on it, but it pushes the boundary's of patients, I just read about the dual memory, but can't turn it off as its up-to positioning of the memory sticks in the motherboard, if it was the same error everytime you could avoid it, but it's so erratic, example, save Mike 3 on his own in Poser as a scene, load in Vue renders fine, save EXO armour on it's own, load in Vue and it also renders fine,  conform armour to Mike 3 and Vue won't load it. Is it Vue or Poser you tell me. I have the hardware recommended by e-on.

I save DAZ V3SAE high rez, imported from Poser 6 into Vue 5i as .vob all the time. Right-click on the figure in Vue > Save Object > Save As > .vob. Some Proprietary models cannot be saved, to prevent pirarcy, but you can save what you make yourself. 

ViciousCircle - you can't import them AS VOB files - you import them as Pz3 or OBJ into a blank scene, then save them in Vue as a VOB. Open your next scene/scene you want to add it to, and load your new VOB. The upside - imports and renders much faster. The downside - if you want to make changes to your figures/models in Power they won't be updated in Vue meaning you need to do the process again.

Sorry to all of you having what sounds like disastrous problems - haven't had any myself. Of course I also don't mess with C3D or import dynamic Poser content either - I prefer to make my own models.

On that note, I have XSI Found., Strata 3DCX, and C4D-XL bundle and I STILL find myself importing everything into Vue5Inf for assembly and rendering - Vue's lighting, atmo, and rendering tools are by far the easiest to manage and surprisingly deep hidden by a very simple looking interface. These are by far more professional programs yet I RELY on Vue to finish the jobs without a hitch - which it does.

Sometimes programs don't like others on your system, sometimes they don't like the brand of memory (believe it or not) regardless of how much there is, the graphics card, the motherboard, if the hard drive has over 75% capacity things slow down, yadda yadda yadda. While a nightmare may be happening on one person's computer, it's not on others' - so there's bound to be any number of reasons why it does or doesn't work on someone's computer, given that Vue5 is the exact same code and build for us all.

I'll be getting V6 when it's released without a second thought.

1. Three times, i have reported problems in Vue 5i to e-on support (opened a regular ticket) and 3 times those problems were fixed in the next update and i got a response within 8 hours. So they do deal with problems, in my experience.

2. I believe Vue does have too many problems (for too many people). A lot of people have problems with Vue and not with other programs. I have a couple half-baked theories about that, but nothing very solid.

3. On my systems, i run Vue 5i all day with 1 or 2 Poser high rez figures, some ecosystems, fancy lighting, etc. and never a crash. It's been at least a year since my last Vue 5i crash. I know this is not the case for many people and i know this is typical for many others. I've never tried animation or really huge scenes.

4. I'm a PC consultant (and web developer/marketer) on Windows XP Professional and i build solid PCs and keep them in tip-top shape. But that doesn't mean Vue should fail for those that don't do so (if that has anytjing to do with it).

5. Windows XP "free memory" is an urban myth. There is no such beast. So, you can't use the 'Performance' tab of the Windows XP Task Manager to look for memory leaks (but, if you are using a special program designed to monitor WindXP memory usage, that's different). The job of the Windows XP memory manager is to use all available memory all the time and to make sure there is no free (unused) memory. Free memory would be a waste of resources. If your apps don't need some memory, Windows uses it to store the most recent pieces of programs or the most recent data you used, so you can fetch it faster if you happen to need it again. Here is a good resource on WinXP memory (with a good discussion of setting up your Virtual Memory).

Win XP Memory Info