Sorry for the long wait for a response. I had to go to bed and now I am at work. What it was doing was staying on the Preview window while it did the pre-render. Which took quite a while.  Then It would switch to the render window with a black screen. The rendering button would disappear. I waited a while afterwards and nothing ever changed. I was wondering what people were talking about when they mentioned red dots but I never saw any.

Since I entered the message at the forum here. I have uninstalled and re-installed. Rebooted a few times and now Poser 8 native content renders fine. With and without the indirect lights. I finally got to see the red dots. Now It starts the pre-render now in the preview window ( for only a few moments) and then goes to the Render window and continues the pre-render. Instead of stopping like it did before.

Haven't tried anything yet from one of my other runtimes. Just haven't had the time. Probably won't have time until later tonight. As in much later.  I hope this also fixed the bad texture message I was getting with the Mill horse but won't know until I get time to try again.

Still can't apply materials while in the Preview window. But most of the time can from the Material room. But I understand that this is a known issue.  

Poser Pro 2010