Thanks for the input.  Among the first things I did was to defrag (I have more that 50% free space on both my C: Drive and in my Raid Array).  I also ran malware and adware tools, windows update, turned monitoring off the drives for Photoshop elements and closed all unecessary programs in the system tray.

The strange thing is that I have loaded this scene many times without difficulty.  This is a new phenomena and I'm stuck.

When it's trying to load there is very little CPU activity, plenty of RAM left and the page file never gets very big (relatively speaking).  Yet the drives are thrashing away!

If I can't figure it out I will have to do a complete re-install of Carrara, and then content.

Really looking foward to that!

Klebnor

Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device.  Beige horizontal case.  I don't display my unit.