I bought a recent HP pavilion that had Poser 6's recommended specs.

I've added  the Poser 6 cat, dog, horse, raptor, fish, dophin, lion and frog figures.  I've noticed that at this point, Poser 6 will only open the Poser file if I double click on it from the My Computer browser. (When I'm in Poser 6 itself and simply open it, I get the cursor back, but no document screen opens.)

But with the scene open under My Computer, I've added Ben Casual and then everything grinds to a halt.  The parameter dials are sticky and slow.  I don't know if this is normal or not. I tried the various figure display styles, and even hiding the animals.

My thread search on "Poser 6 not opening files" turned up the thread on the evils of having Norton on your machine. My PC came with Norton, so tommorrow is Nuke Norton Day (wish me luck). 

BTW, the thread search could be made a little better.  It pulls up a whole lot of extranenous stuff.  That's one reason people keep asking the same questions.

I see the minimum requirements are 500MHz processor / 256MB RAM, recommended 700MHz / 512MB. If that's all you have, your Poser experience will be disappointing, to say the least. What are your actual specs? The file opening problem may not be related, but it can take a long time to get a scene open within Poser. Mine quite often sits there in complete darkness for quite some time before I see the preview; what it's doing, I have no idea...

To get better performance while using poser on a low end machine--turn of your Anti-Virus while posering!  Anti-Virus will eat you out and home if you have constricted machine specs.  Mine is low end, now-a-days, and I turn off all unneccesary programs and operations while using poser. Poser is a resource hog, and doesn't play well with others.

When the parm dials bog down, you'll have to section your scene into layers.  In general--the lower poly figures are lighter on the machine than higher poly figures. Polygons are like weight, and your machine can only carry so much before it stops.  If the parm dials start sticking--you're about over-loaded.

Do BG stuff, save as png. Do mid-ground stuff--save as png.  Do fore-ground stuff--save as png.  Put them all together, and you're through.  Takes practice, but it works.

Otherwise--get a newer, bigger machine.  I NEED a newer, bigger machine! :lol:

Here's my specs, straight from the "Performance and maintenance" tab: 

MS Windows XP Media Center Edition version 2002 Service Pack 2

HP Pavilion
AMD Althlon 64x2 Duo Core Processor 4200+
2.20 GHz, 960 MB Ram
Physical Address Extension

Total Page File Size for all drives: 1440MB

 I did notice that my antivirus was generating a lot of actvity, so I temporarily turned it off. That didn't seem to help much. But with Norton, who knows what's really going on? 

The file opening  problem just went away on the problem file!  I hate intermittant malfunctions. Their like trying to catch a mouse out of its mouse-hole.  

Happy Nuke Norton Day!

I don't know about the poser animals but Im using Poser 6 with about the same system as you except a tad more ram and I can get 1 V4 and 2 Apollos before it bogs down.  3 Apollos will not happen no matter what I do in any program.  (Vue Carrara or Poser). 

You will not believe this, but the problem has gone slightly away as of noon today.  Not only did the file open properly,  but Ben is movable with the parameter dials, though with some jerkyness. The only thing I can think of is that the problem started about  1 to 2 am.  (Yes, I am a nightbird).  I can only speculate that something may be running in the background at night that's not showing up on task manager window, because I shut down the HP update task and Norton Center.   Another good reason for Nuke Norton Day.

**JJ, while I was looking in the MyComputer/ControlPanel//performance and maitenance, I saw  "adjust visual effects."  There is a button for "adjust for best performance." clicking on it changes the look and feel of the HP screens but frees up a little bit more resources. To get back its:  Start/ControlPanel/System/Advanced/Performance/Settings/VisualEffects.

**

Found it! In "MyComputer//ControlPanel/Performance and Maintenance/See Basic Information (System Properties)/Automatic Updates"  I found that windows has its automatic update download time set to 3:00am.    I normally turn the computer off when I'm  not using it, so a bunch of updates must have accumulated and then kicked off when I got past the 3:00am point. (When I'm using Poser, I'm USING Poser).  

I'm sorry for the wild goose chase. But as long as my system specs are out there, can anyone see room for upgrading?

i use a nifty app called "enditall" (came free with PC Magazine) everytime before I open poser... it kills all BG processess thar are doing nothing other than swallowing RAM like it's 2012 already...

once all of them are killed, my poser experience is somewhat pleasant (I have your same specs, and believe me that's still too little for Poser)

There is a scientifically proven number to the question and it is: One less than you need.

Quote - ...But as long as my system specs are out there, can anyone see room for upgrading?

RAM.
It's like chocolate, can't ever get enough of it :)
A 32-bit app. can use 2GB (there's a 3GB switch; but I don't use it), but XP uses alot of RAM no matter what you do with it.
Optimally, you would want 2GB of RAM free for Poser to use.
If you are running any 64-bit apps, then usage basically becomes unlimited, you can use as much RAM as you can stuff into your machine.

Enditall is now superceded by Task Power 2. 
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1853881,00.asp
Thanks for the clue,  sandmarine.

""There is a scientifically proven number to the question and it is: One less than you need.""

lmao, so true!

Here is what all the fuss was over.  Thanks for all your help.

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

awesome image!! glad we all could be of some help...

3DSmacker - How big is the scene?

I've not grown out of my AMD 700Mhz, with 756MBs of PC100.  Of coarse when I realized how to remove 235MBs of morphs, from my 250MB V3.pz3 scene, life has been...different:

Look for SVDL's RemoveMorphs python script, in his Free Stuff.  Run it and it will will remove all of the morphs with a parameter dial value of 0(it may only work for one figure at a time.)  This could easily cut your scene in half!  If you need more, there is more, but here is your fastest start.

As before, Angelouscuitry, the scene that gave the trouble is now at:  

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

I solved the problem by hiding figures until the slowness abated.  Very shortly, I shall be RAMing up my PC to the max.

thank you for you contribution. I shall be looing into it.

On the subject of large numbers of figures in a scene, there's another way of going about it. You can use what I call "Cut-outs"- some folks call them "bilboards". Here's the link to a piece I posted in my gallery some time back that might help:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1375158&member

That's a good contribution. I didn't think of that one.

It really helps reduce the file size- I would never have gotten my Sgt.Rock project done without it.

"As before, Angelouscuitry, the scene that gave the trouble is now at:"  

Oh, yeah, woop.  Yep there are plenty of Figures; probably none with extensive morphs, but most likely with those that have unused morphs.  For future referrence SVDL has a pthon called RemoveMorphs.py  It will remove all of the morphs, of a figure, that are set to 0.  I managed to reduce my V3CharacterStusy.pz3, from 250MBs, to about 80 with it.

There is also more, if you interested in making themost of your new purchase, but we'd need a screenshot of all the Render Settings.

If you use the "DownRezer" poser utility, you might be able to fit twice as much people in your scene. Look for it in the renderosity marketplace. It works great, and you can't even see the difference in textures, once you render.

Telecino - Thank you for your direction.  I looked over DownRezer, in the MP; but, tell me something, what is the difference between it and just limiting the Max. Texture Size setting(of Render > Render Settings?)

Having an actual smaller file size reduces the required computation from the CPU (like computing the new texter files size) when rendering, thus a faster rendering, and less RAM used.

Ah!  K.   Thanks!