So, there you are, about to render after many renders and many changes...and sh*t! Poser hangs! All your changes are lost, right? WRONG. Today, I discovered (In poser 4.03 anyway...) that even though you can't click "stop" when this happens, what you can do is this: Hit Alt-F for "File" menu. You won't see it pop up. Still holding alt, then hit alt-s for save. Again, you won't see a dialogue box, but it's working! The next part relies on instinct. You have to wait a reasonable amount of time for it to be done saving. You're going to see the hourglass forever. When you know in your heart it's finished, then ctr-alt-delete to get out of stuck poser and reboot your computer. Load the saved crashed pz3. What is wierd is that it's going to load in render mode, and you probably won't see anything but background color in the box. Don't worry! It's going to start rendering and all your crap is still there. Once it's done rendering then you can save as normal and be all set. Of course, the better idea is always save before you render, but when you don't, you now have this. -WTB

THAT is a good discovery. Thanks for sharing.

Or you could just take the easy way and install Win2K.

LOL! "When you know in your heart it's finished" hahahahaha thanks WTB that is a great tip and as a bonus it also made me laugh my head of at that statement. LOL

Thanks, W_T_B, do I ever need this tip :-) I have it happen so often now it's beginning to drive me crazy. You have saved my day indeed!! Now to have some patience and wait until I think it has saved - that could be a problem for me LOL.

ahhh grasshopper you will know when the time shall come

:D

thank you WTB, this is one I certainly can use :)

grasshoppper!!! LMFAO @ Noxx Thanks WTB. I just know that's gonna be a life saver s

does 4.03 have a bad bug? lately after i install it, i get about 2 renders before it locks up..it never did that before i upgraded

heyas; cool! can you also just hit ctrl-s to 'save'? but i'm afraid to do that and overwrite the pz3 i already have that i know is at least complete. if i'm REALLY good (and psychic), can i hit alt-f, a (i hope that's save as), type in a new name and hit enter? :) um... its done saving when the hard drive light winks out? ;)

Hey great one. Ron

Hey Veamon, I seem to have the same problem. I thought it was something I was doing - I feel better now :-)

Well.. if you want to save the file, go into the directory, find the file you are working on, and copy and paste it.. instant back up. That way if the new saved file is dead, just delete it and rename the copied file to the origional file name.

Jogert is correct. This method of saving progress might just be a very nasty way of doing things. Just in case Poser decides to overwrite your pz3 with gibberish, you will want to do as jogert says then take my advice after. Good show, jogert! -WTB

Veamon, Rain: I think that the Patch requires more memory and so if you are running low on physical or virtual memory it may lock up. Rendering takes a S@#$ load of memory. Adjust your memory settings, or get more RAM. Otherwise, save and pray! Ryoko

Since I install Win2K, it looks that I do not have this problem anymore even after many renderings.

Way cool, WTB. ;] Kudos.... take one very major "atta boy" out of petty cash and save it for a rainy day - nice tip.

Wow. I'm not the only one who gets this problem! I spent 3 days with Curious Labs people trying to figure out WTF was wrong! All they could tell me to do was to try reinstalling Poser. That, needless to say, was just a waste of time and computer space. U.U Thanks, WTB. I NEED this thing.

Khrys, don't rely on this technique. Save before rendering! This is strictly for if you forget after much work. -WTB

Yeah yea.. lol, this advice comes after loosing countless hours/days/weeks/years of work on several occasions.. back ups.. know em, love em.. lol. I you make a badck up and restore it thinking you can then delete the backup because you're safe.. think again, keep till you make a new one! I just lost ALL of my poser data that way.. sigh.. and then I found out that Morphworld closed down (When did that all happen?). Been out of this scene for a long time, I just skip in for occasional updates.. stupid job.. lol. Anyone want to write me a 20 pages or less summary on what happened in the last 6 months to a year? :D Ah well, so that's my advice in a nutshell.. save often, save freely, and save in several places if it's important! Jogert

I had occasion to try this technique and it did save the file, but also came back up rendering, and kept on rendering (14 before I stopped it). I'm sure I did something not quite right. But I did find that a command in the doc section of the .pz3 file, "displayMode CUSTOMRENDERED", caused it to render when the file is opened. After taking that out the .pz3 came up fine with no other renders. I also agree that this should be done in an emergency only! Saving often is the only way to keep things from falling into the bit bucket!

I was able to stop the rendering cycle after the second one by simply hitting "Stop" because believe it or not, that button actually does something when everything is working right. After hitting "Stop" and having everything show up again in the window (I don't know if I had to do this or not but I clicked on and off "display preferences" such as texture shaded, then saved after everything was cool and not rendering. Now the Pz3 is fine with no rendering on start up and no text editing. -WTB

That's why I think I did something not quite right in the process. I stopped rendering using the "Stop" button, but did'nt hit any of the "display preferances". When I saved it to a different name, it still came back up rendering. Perhaps the on and off of the display preferances turned off the CUSTOMRENDER setting. It's a great find. I've had it hang up rendering several times, and (with a red face) had not saved the settings! Thanks.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should keep up with the forum. Look at all the good stuff you get. and jogert, NEVER delete a backup. Because it's when you think you're safe, that you'll know that you never are! CD Burners are the way to go, especially for us Poser-ers. Posies? Nah, that don't sound right. What's the term for us anyway? Just Poser addicts? Is there a Poser Anonymous? :D Thanks to you, WTB

Posies? LOL! That's pretty funny.. I'd stick with that just because.. hehe. I know.. I know.. but you know what they say, everyone will heed all te best advice except their own.. lol. I did tech support for years, fixed problems innumerable, so when I did a simple re-install of my os it should have been no big deal right? Wrong, 2k decided it wanted to find that drive that I disabled in the bios and delete it's partition during setup.. isn't that special? lol Jogert

Cheers for that! I'm stuck with Win Me, so I too have this problem :) my box came with Win 2K, but that cripples most of the freeware, etc. that I want to run if I use a windows machine to browse with, so... I also hate having to login to a windows box, which 2K makes you do, I'd use "hibernate" to avoid that problem, but of course, that doesn't appear to work, no matter what PC OS I use :) Anyone working on a Linux, BeOS or QNX port let me know, I'd be interested :) later jb

Actually, if you have 2k pro, there is an option to have it automatically log you in. I think it's under the user preferences.. not sure.. lol I use advanced server myself.. I have a use for its more powerful features (home network). I also found 2kpro to not run as well in some areas, but for most users it's fine. But I'm a nt4 kid here.. lol, so I'm used to the down and dirty. Jogert

I've been playing with the model that I crash saved, and it seems that somehow, the V2's joint paramaters got slightly skewered. The knees are now misaligned and the thighs seem to bulge out of porportion to the hip slightly. All morphs are turned off, so I don't know what's going on just yet, but be warned!