Up until recently I have had no major issues with poser 7 but now it seems those days are over.
I never had the amount of crashing to desktop ( crashing to windows) as I do now. Maybe once in a blue moon it would now it's happening a lot. Is it possible for P7 to become unstable over a period of time? I don't know where to isolate the trouble the only thing that has been done to my machine is a new Wacom tablet as my old one finally wore out and more RAM. I did have to do a system restore as I had issues with some things.

I had updated the display driver the the newest version and all that did was cause more trouble so I uninstalled that driver and went back to the one that was installed before and poser just doesn't seem to run as smoothly as it did. I wonder if there are parts of the old driver stuck somewhere but I have no idea where to look for it. I am wondering if I should uninstall the driver again and use something like drive cleaner, reinstall, reboot and hope for the best. OR  uninstall poser, clean the registry of all poser stuff and reinstall. All I know is poser 7 is not running as smooth as it used to. If I am using a tablet do I need to have the tablet mode checked in the general preferences?

If I move a camera, bring in a figure, conform an item or anything like this poser just shuts down to the desktop screen OR figures just disappear. I have run virus scans, spyware scans, defraged the HD, used Ccleaner and it's no help. None of my other programs have problems like my paint program or Vue so I am guessing this is a poser 7 thing. I'd hate to go back to P6 as I can't use the HDRI porducts I have and it doesn't support rendering in a seperate process on my dual core machine.

Any suggestions would be very helpful until then I guess when I work on a scene now I will have to save every little step.

Thanks!

 I don't know where to isolate the trouble the only thing that has been done to my machine is a new Wacom tablet

You Might want to unplug the tablet when using poser ...
I had troubles etc etc until i unplugged my wacom ..never had any trouble again...

im not saying that its 100% the tablet but its looking like my probl. and the one thing that we both have is the tablet...

i just pull out the tablet usb conn .. and when i need it i put it back again ..simple

Chris

Switch Poser's preview to SreeD, if that stop the crashes, then you've got an OpenGL problem, in which case tweeking Poser's settings (try turning off hardware shading), or the drivers may help.

I've also found that when your HD gets close to full capacity or over used(meaning stuff constantly added and deleted). poser gets unresponsive.. as well as many other programs. I just had some major problems myself about a month ago I did a full format and reinstalled everything. my comp is now running like a champ.
you might want to try to defrag your HD if you havent already. that will help keep files in line and not all scattered, it's not a miricle cure but at times it can help.

I am using 23.6GB out of a 250GB SATA HD and a defrag was done just yesterday. LOL I am really anal about defragging, spyware and virus scans. I really feel the problem may lie in the display driver that was updated and then rolled back because that newest drive has problems. I will just have to keep an eye on things for a bit and if it becomes a bigger problem I'll need to take action.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help!

I think I found a bug in P7 - if you are rendering an animation and you disconnect the mouse (unplug from usb) - poser eventually crashes.  My monitor has a built in hub.  SO I start the rendering at night and turn off the monitor - which turns off the hub - which turns off the mouse.  Next morning - poser has disappeared.  All I see is my desktop.

Repro's 100%

just fyi

I had a problem that sounds very much like you did. I'm using an ATI RADEON x1950 pro video card. I saw that there was a driver update on the ATI site so I d/l'd and installed the new drivers. They managed to turn Poser7 into an unstable mess. It had been running flawlessly for months before that. I rolled back the driver and still had problems.
I was able to resolve the issue by reinstalling the offending driver, and using ATIs software removal tool to get rid of the driver. THen I simply reinstalled the older, more stable drivers, and have had no problems since then. I don't know what type of video card your using. If its an ATI card then just follow my steps to repair the problem. If its a non ATI card then you want to do 1 of 2 things. 1. Find a software utilitiy from your videocard maker that will let you uninstal the driver completely (rolling back to the previous driver wont work), or 2. delete your videocard in your device manager and reboot your computer. It will find the videocard and ask you to supply drivers. Presto!
If you have any further need of assistance, feel free to PM me and I will try to be of assistance. Good Luck!

Pagan,
You didn't actually think that retired life was going to be trouble free did you?

Probably has nothing to do with Poser at all, just Mr. Gates way of saying, "He cares."

Attached Link: Mike Jones Drop & Gimme 50

I found some bugs in Poser when using layered animations....whille I was in the middle of a project of course. Well I've done a 4 minute animation using Victoria 4.1 if you want to see Poser and Daz3d Victoria in action please take a look...its a music video hip hop and may be offensive to some people in which case I apologize in advance for the booty shaking and partial nudity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQbPp8wSr8U

Hey nice work on the video!  That style of mv is well suited for poser!

To the person mentioning the ATI driver reinstall.  I wholeheartedly agree.  I think the key is making sure you use the ATI driver removal tool.  It would also be good if E-frontier QA would tell us what system specs they tested Poser 7 with, such as:

Graphics card model, bios and driver versions.

Network Card model and driver version

Motherboard model, bios and driver versions

If system tested is preconfigured (e.g. DELL), what model number and was it run STOCK (i.e. no driver updates other than what DELL/Microsoft installs).

System requirements on the box are fine, but when problems get down to a driver version, then the above info really helps.

I have to agree with nruddock

I was having all kind of unrelated weirdness, which disappeared when I switched to SreeD for previews.  

I know this means that previews are slower, but I'm just waiting till a better driver comes out for my Gigabyte Nvida 8800GTS.