I created a scene in Poser 7 using V4. When I attempted to open the file in P7 later on, it caused P7 to crash. I tried several times, but P7 just kept crashing. I couldn't open the file in Poser 6, so I changed the file name of the scene I was working on, and tried to open it in P7 again.  This time, instead of crashing, P7 asked me to locate the .PMD file associated with the scene, and it opened to P7's geometries directory. I had no idea where the file might be, so I opted to open the scene without the missing file.

The scene opened, looked just like I had saved it, but now all of V4's morphs are gone.  I can't recall anyone else mentioning this problem. Could anyone explain to me what happened? I'm leery of trying to use P7 after this, my scene is now unusable (because I need V4's morphs to work ), and I don't want to end up with this problem again. Do I do something wrong?

TIA,
Linda B

That has happened to me a few times, apparently the file becomes damaged and is trashed.  It seems to be related to "use binary morph target" option in preferences, I've disabled it on both installs and it seems to have cleared it up.

I don't think there is a good fix for trying to recover the damaged file (poor error handling on e-frontier's part).

ps: I've gotten in the habit of periodically saving with a new filename when I hit a reasonable landmark in building a scene file just in case this happens to me again.

I've disabled it , saved V4 and reopened with no problems - hopefully that fixed it and I won't run into the problem again - thanks!
Linda B

Cool, you are luckier than I was, I was unable to recover the file.

Yeah, same here.  I lost a huge scene I was working on because I forgot Poser 7 came with use external binary morph targets on by default.  I turned it off in Poser 6 when this happened and never used pbm again because its just too iffy!  Same goes for saving a Pz3 as a Pzz, had those get corrupted on me as well.  

As you already discovered if you get rid of the pbm link when Poser asked to look for it and you tell it no, the file will open but with no morphs.  In Poser 6 I could salvage this somewhat because I could open the animation Pallet and copy and past the contents into a text editor.  Once I had done that, and turned pbm off, I could reload (swap) the no morph figures out of my scene replacing them with new morphs intact from the library.  I then could copy and paste the settings back into the animation pallet and restore my scene. 

Notice I said used to.  That's cause appararently Poser 7 you can't copy and paste from the animation pallete like that any more.  So that totally sucks as I made use of that little trick quite a lot!   So, for now, I am trying to salvage the current scene I just lost by going back into Poser 6 and doing there. 

Having said all that.  I still like Poser 7 overall.  

I wasn't able to recover the file, either, but I was able to save the pose that I had spent a lot of time on, by saving it to the library. I had to start over with a new scene, but at least I didn't have to redo the pose.  Shouldn't run into that problem again now that I've disabled 'use binary morph target' - hopefully.

I have had pretty good luck since I disabled it, I hadn't lost a scene yet in maybe 150 hours of work.  While it was on, I lost three scenes in about 30 hours (seems pretty likely that was the culprit).

If you haven't tried it yet, try importing the broken scene. I don't know if P7 can do it, but I've seen it work for others in P6.

If you're able to import it, you should be able to save it again and be ok (assuming you turned the aforementioned option off).

I disabled the pmd in P6. How do I do it in P7?

Quote - I disabled the pmd in P6. How do I do it in P7?

Exactly the same way.
Edit menu | "General Preferences ..." | Misc tab and uncheck "Use external binary morph targets".