NOTE:   Although more than Poser is involved here, it seems more likely that Poser might lead me to a solution than the other programs.  Hence, I've posted it in this forum.  If the administrator feels it should be posted elsewhere, by all means do so.

Some months ago, my two main computer drives (which were linked) totally crashed and had to be replaced.  I then reinstalled my CG programs; Bryce 6.1, Poser 6.0, and Vue Pro Studio 6.0.  The following things resulted:

Bryce:  Works as usual, except that the Sky preset menu will not recognize any preset files.

Vue:  Appears to work but does it so slowly that it takes about 20 minutes (sometimes more) from the time one clicks the mouse until the action is performed.  (So far it takes about an hour to get from initially calling up the program to the place where the File menu can be called up.  I haven't had the patience to see what happens after that, so I don't know if it can call up a scene or not.  Same with an Vue object.

Poser:  When I open the program it loads to a point, then gives the following error message:
"Drive not ready Exception
Processing Message c00000a3 Parameters 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c"

I then have the option to cancel, try again, or continue.  Pressing any one of then just brings up the above error message in an endless loop.  I have to use my Windows Task Manager to close the program.

The other weird thing is that when I try to reinstall either Poser or Vue from the original program disk, the computer refuses to read it.

I have ruled out viruses and worms.  My computer is clean.  

My only suspicion as to a cause is that my Windows XP home program has installed a new security update to the Windows Defender program.  I did get one pop up message saying Defender had determined that Poser was a security risk and would not allow it to be accessed.  I went into the Defender menus and made the needed changes to make Poser a trusted program.  The funny thing was that menu for trusted programs and the menu for blocked programs both had windows that were supposed to show a list of each.  Both windows were blank and I could not access either menu to add or subtract any programs.  For example, in the Blocked menu, there was no listing of Poser, even though I had just received that message saying Defender had blocked it.  Needless to say, I still keep getting that Drive not ready exception message.

Can anybody give me a clue as what's going on and how to fix it? 

Jeremy

Two HDD's died at the same time? That sounds kinda bad, more than just bad luck or coincidence. Or do you mean partitions on the same drive? When you say "linked ", do you mean RAID?
I'd say you have more problems than just Poser, Bryce and Vue, and I'd do a complete reformat of all drives and reinstall the whole OS.
You might try deleting all references to those programs in Documents and Settings and  the registry, but your drive failures might have caused problems you haven't even noticed yet elsewhere.
Personally, in a situation like that I'd rather reformat everything and start over with a fresh OS, rather than try to find and eliminate every little problem I see now or might run across in the future.

Kinda obvious, but have you checked if all your HDD connectors are securely fixed ? SATA connectors have a very annoying habit of coming loose at the slightest touch and that will give you all sorts of HDD problems. And if they're too old, maybe try replacing them. Check the power connectors too while you're at it.

Normally an HDD will never ever say 'drive not ready' unless something is seriously fricked up.

Thank you for such fast response!  The thing is, I replaced both drives.  The original drives were operating as one drive, rather than two.  I don't know if that is RAID or not.  Sorry.   I'm willing to reformat,  but the thing is that it was reformated before I reinstalled on the new drives.  I'm dubious that another reformat would help at this point.  I appreciate your suggestion and will take it under serious advisement.  I hope you can understand my hesitation to do so, having just got my drives finally reinstalled over a couple of months.  (I have a lot of stuff and locating the  backups was a real pain and major investment in time.)  Think I'll wait and see if anybody else has some other alteratives before I act on your advise (which makes a lot of sense to me.)
 

Jeremy

Can you elaborate as to what a SATA connector is? 
 

J.

A SATA connector  is where it connects to the motherboard and the drive. One on each end of the SATA cable. Do you have SATA drives, or IDE drives "linked" as dynamic disks? SATA is Serial ATA, a type of drive, faster than the older IDE type (the ones with the real wide ribbon cables).
Probably you have RAID 0, with SATA drives. RAID 0 is where two drives act as one.

I didn't just mean reformatting those two drives, but reformatting the main C drive (assuming you have Windows on C) and reinstalling Windows from the original disk or OEM restore disk.

Could be loose SATA connections, but considering your other problems I'd say your operating system got hosed somehow. Your other disks might not have gone bad to begin with.

What make and model PC and motherboard? Do you have access to the BIOS?

Sorry, but you confused me. Are you saying your two drives were your ONLY two drives, or only your 3D content drives? Your original post makes it sound as though you still had Windows up and running after the death of the drives in question.

SATA cables are the current way of connecting hard drives to a mainboard. They're flat, about 1/4 " width, and especially if you have an older mainboard, they tend to come loose rather easily.

There are several ways of operating two drives "as one": JBOD, also called spanning (which means simply daisy-chaining two drives in to one large volume), RAID 0, also called striping, which spreads the data over the two disks, speeding up transfer rate, and RAID1 (mirroring), which writes all data to both hard disks, so that if one disk fails, all data is still accessible on the other disk.

JBOD is of little use with the current 1 TB drives, those disks are large enough all by themselves.
RAID0 improves transfer rate, but if one of the disks fails, all data is gone. Quite risky.
RAID1 provides redundancy, which sounds like it's sort of an online backup system.

There's a couple of problems with RAID1. First of all, when setting up a RAID1 array, you'll probably buy both disks at the same time. When one of those disks fails, it's rather likely that the other one will fail too, within a couple of weeks, or even days.
Second - and this applies to most modern consumer mainboards - the single point of failure now is the harddisk controller, i.e. the southbridge chip. And especially nVidia southbridge chips are more susceptible to failure than the disks themselves. Case in point: I fried three nVidia southbridge chips on fairly new (less than 2 years) and even brand new mainboards within two weeks!

Concerning your problem: this may be a driver issue and/or a hardware issue.
If you can tell me how you "linked" your drives (either in the BIOS setup or in Windows using mount points), and if you can tell me the brand and model of the mainboard and the drives, I may be able to pinpoint the problem.

SATA connector is the physical cable that attaches inside your computer from motherboard to the back of the hard drive.  Also refered to as ribbon cables.

The cable ends at a connector, one end goes into the motherboard slot and the other connector goes into the hard drive.  sometimes these connectors that are on the cable don't fit in tight to the hard drive or the motherboard connector and can be half seated (partially connected).

Also you should check your computers BIOS settings and make sure you computer BIOS is seeing the correct settings and everything is enabled.

putting in a hard drive is not just simply putting in a hard drive and going to town.  you have to play with BIOS settings and make sure that Windows in loading the proper drivers for the hard drives.

common problems are BIOS settings incorrect.  comuter works but you get really slow performance cause the hard drives and BIOS is not setup correctly.  the settings are written on the top of the hard drive case and these are the settings that sometimes have to be manually input.  newer motherboards will automatically recognize new hard drives but it's always hit or miss depending on how old or new your hard ware is and BIOS versions etc.

another problem is Windows may not have proper drivers in your Windows Device settings and your running your newly installed hard drives with the wrong driver.  this can be solved by going into windows control panel and run the application install new hardware, Windows sometimes will pickup the correct driver that way.

I don't know how techno savy you are but there are a lot of things that can cause slow down on a system.

if you just copied your Windows operating system directories and did not do a new install then you will have tons of issues with speed etc.

another things is when you put in the new hard drives you may have inadvertanly unseated a card, other cables etc.  you should open the computer and just push gently on all your connections and make sure everything is seated correctly.  I used to have a card in my computer that any time I opened the case the card would pop out half way and my computer would just crawl until I went back in a reseated the card.  ground yourself before toching anything in your computer.  static kills electronics and it only takes a tiny bit to fry parts.

I'm afraid that my technical computer knowledge is just enough to be very dangerous!. (sigh/grin)   It would not be a very good idea for me to go messing with the insides of my computer.   I've got a program that will tell what is on my computer.  Would it help if I posted that?
 

J.

Quote - ...Can anybody give me a clue as what's going on and how to fix it?   

Jeremy

Is this Vista?

I don't have Vista.. I avoid it like the plague right now.  But, some people say that installing Poser in its default "Programs" directory will cause problems in Vista because of the permissions that Poser needs to have available to it in that otherwise Vista "protected" directory.  So, they recommend installing Poser in a directory by itself, off the main root directory instead so as to avoid database/runtime access issues.

Could this be the case here?

I'm not very knowledgeable on computers but having 2 different pieces of hardware go at the same time makes me wonder if there isn't more wrong with you hardware. Do you know what caused the drives to go south? I've seen computers do wacky things.

I use XP home edition.  I don't use Vista (and don't intend to).
 

All I know is there was a very loud Pop! and they were gone.  I do have surge protection, etc.  The drives that blew have been replaced.
 

J.

Oo-kay.
THat "POP" probably wasn't the drives. Far more likely it was the southbridge on your mainboard, the chip that controls the drives, tne PCI bus and the network. A blown southbridge may seem to work, but it would account for the troubles you're having.
Expect just about every program to behave wonky.

YOu'll probably have to replace the mainboard of the computer. Depending on the age of your machine, it might mean replacing the entire machine.

Okay.  Thanks everybody.  I'll have to check this out with my computer man. 
 

Jeremy

Quote - Oo-kay.
THat "POP" probably wasn't the drives. Far more likely it was the southbridge on your mainboard, the chip that controls the drives, tne PCI bus and the network. A blown southbridge may seem to work, but it would account for the troubles you're having.
Expect just about every program to behave wonky.

YOu'll probably have to replace the mainboard of the computer. Depending on the age of your machine, it might mean replacing the entire machine.

I wonder, what do the screams of dying Southbridges sound like?  Pop? :)

Yeah, what svdl said. I would have suggested maybe a capacitor blew, but he's probably right. I hope you didn't throw away the drives, because they're probably still good.

Quote -
I don't have Vista.. I avoid it like the plague right now.  But, some people say that installing Poser in its default "Programs" directory will cause problems in Vista because of the permissions that Poser needs to have available to it in that otherwise Vista "protected" directory.  So, they recommend installing Poser in a directory by itself, off the main root directory instead so as to avoid database/runtime access issues.

Yeah, right. Vista manages memory a whole lot better, particularly runs 64 bit programs faster and more stable, and every last little bit of that permissions stuff can be done away with by disabling the UAC.
Vista isn't any kind of "plague", it's the way MS operating system's are going. I've been running Vista x64 for over a year and a half on three different computers and have zero, zilch, nada trouble with it. I've done benchmarks with various games, Maya, max, modo, and LightWave under Vista and XP x64, and Vista has come out on top on all occasions. Maybe not Poser though. No mere operating system alone can save Poser...
People who have trouble with Vista either have mediocre hardware or don't know how to take control of their computers.
Best get used to the idea - XP is soon to be history, unsupported, abandonware.

Quote - Yeah, what svdl said. I would have suggested maybe a capacitor blew, but he's probably right. I hope you didn't throw away the drives, because they're probably still good.

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Quote -
I don't have Vista.. I avoid it like the plague right now.  But, some people say that installing Poser in its default "Programs" directory will cause problems in Vista because of the permissions that Poser needs to have available to it in that otherwise Vista "protected" directory.  So, they recommend installing Poser in a directory by itself, off the main root directory instead so as to avoid database/runtime access issues.

Yeah, right. Vista manages memory a whole lot better, particularly runs 64 bit programs faster and more stable, and every last little bit of that permissions stuff can be done away with by disabling the UAC.
Vista isn't any kind of "plague", it's the way MS operating system's are going. I've been running Vista x64 for over a year and a half on three different computers and have zero, zilch, nada trouble with it. I've done benchmarks with various games, Maya, max, modo, and LightWave under Vista and XP x64, and Vista has come out on top on all occasions. Maybe not Poser though. No mere operating system alone can save Poser...
People who have trouble with Vista either have mediocre hardware or don't know how to take control of their computers.
Best get used to the idea - XP is soon to be history, unsupported, abandonware.

I'm not trying to get into an OS debate.  I avoid Vista "like the plague" for a number of reasons right now including legacy-ware that has significant problems operating in Vista.

I will be "Vista-rized" when I build my next computer.  Yet, I will still be using this XP-Pro box for awhile yet.

Well if you're planning on building a new box, but not soon, and don't like Vista, you might as well plan on Windows 7 instead of paying for Vista. From what I've seen, Windows 7 is everything good about Vista, with the bad parts removed, plus a bunch of better features.

Of course, I still don't much like the idea that Microsoft seems to see the Operating System as an "experience" or a program or form of entertainment in and of itself. IMHO, an operating system should be there to run the programs, not be the center of attention. Unfortunately, their market is largely for the completely computer-ignorant, Dell-buying, You Tube-watching, music-downloading, picture-sharing, pr0n-addicted, emailing-of-trite-crap Public who spend each and every minute online virtually TRYING to get a virus to spread around...

Not to mention the millions of people on an MS box in some office cubicle somewhere who couldn't care less what kind of hell they put their SysAdmin through...

It would be nice if one of these times they came out with an O/S for those of us who know what we're doing, have what we need, and want only a solid workstation O/S without the Nannyware.

Oh wait, they already have that - they call it Linux. ;-)

No, I didn't want to get into an OS debate either, and I apologize if my response seemed kind of inflammatory. Chalk it up to early morning grumpiness. :-)

Actually, my machine is a custom-made 64-bit machine that is about three years old.  I had it when most folks didn't have a 64-bitter.  Irony is that nobody until the past year made a 64-bit graphics program that I could afford.  Now we have Poser 7 Pro something or other, but I won't buy it because I'd have to use Vista and although some folks have had little problem with Vista, I know so many more  who have.   I hope what you say about Windows 7 is true.   I just hate these suites of programs that we have today.  For example, you used to be able to get WordPerfect or Word by itself.  Now, you can't get except if you take on about ten other memory guzzling programs that you'll never need.  Same with all the security programs we have to have.  They not only cost us money, they cost us time, and they often use up most of our RAM.  Sometimes, I wonder if the virus wouldn't be the lesser of the two evils. 
 

Jeremy

Yeah.. I can relate.. :D

wise words .. I hope you get the problem solved

Quote - I use XP home edition.  I don't use Vista (and don't intend to).
 

All I know is there was a very loud Pop! and they were gone.  I do have surge protection, etc.  The drives that blew have been replaced.
 

J.

(This is an educated guess to to past experiences)
I think I might know what your issue is. It sounds like you have an older system (3 years or older), and it sounds like your Motherboard is having issues with reading your drives. This means either your motherboard is going or is almost gone.
IMHO you should take it to a repair shop and have them look at it if you don't know what is going on. And please don't take it to a chain store cause you will not get an honest answer, but take it to a local "ma and pa" shop. Most of the time they will help you out in the cheapest possible way.

Yes, I have just such a shop.  They are the ones who replaced the drives.  I'll take it to them.  I'm seeing a lot of other things happening, too, that strongly leads me to believe it is the motherboard.   Thanks everybody for your help on this.  Much appreciated.  I'll keep this thread open so I can let you know if that was the problem.
 

Jeremy