Its driving me nuts... The interface is also so slow that it takes me 30 mins to do anything. Really... is this a problem with my PC? Is anyone out there using and enjoying a crash-free, fast-interface Poser 8?

It happens to me sometimes that when loading Poser 8 right after rebooting, the OpenGL preview is very slow.  If I exit/start Poser again, it's OK.  I do get crashes on rendering, often between the switch from precalculating indirect lighting and the final render phase, but not in any pattern I can figure out.

Most of my crashes are when using "pop-down" menus on Poser (for example, that menu on the material room that allows you to pick another material to edit, or when you right click the top-left of the preview window to pick a different camera, or when you select another body part). I never got a crash during rendering, but I did get one once when I canceled rendering.

I'm with you.  It's been crashing a ton for me these past few days.  Sometimes when I morph.  Sometimes when I render.  Sometimes when it's just sitting there in the background while I'm doing something else.  Sometimes for no discernable reason.

Also... Here's another issue I've had the past few days (I use Poser all day long to develop content.)  I've saved my file, closed the file and reopened and it had not saved at that point and opened to an earlier save point.  This happens inconsistently.  Needless to say, I was not happy when this happened (plenty of expletives).  If it had happened once, I would have admitted to "user error" on my part.  But, it's happened several times and I've never had that problem before in any software.  Crashing is annoying; unreliable saving is something that is intolerable.  I'm hoping that the next service release starts to fix some of this.  I continue to user Poser 8 because of the cross-bodypart morphing.  It's addictive.

 Have you tried switching to SreeD preview? Does the crashes continue? If so, it may be somehow related to the OpenGL preview and ultimately some video driver.

My Poser is only slow if I have both Chrome with zillions of tabs open, + Photoshop + Hexagon. Other than that it's like previous versions. But it doesn't much like other programs running at the same time :) Greedy bugger ;)

I'm using SreeD with a wireframe preview window. Otherwise I'll get a crash every 2 mins. My video driver is the latest, I tried that as well. And funny that it doesnt really matter what I have open. I usually have 3d studio and Photoshop, plus iTunes + windows mail + some IMs and a few Internet Explorers. But they dont slow down or make my Poser crash more or less. I've tried closing everything.

Same with me.  The number of apps open doesn't seem to make a difference.  I do use OpenGL. I also have the latest video driver.  I'm running on 64-bit Vista.  I've tried with and without compatibility mode - no difference.

 Hm. Odd.

I'd really like to be able to pinpoint what exactly makes Poser 8 crash. I've had it do so a few times, all of them as far as I recall from going to and from the Material Room (perhaps once or twice from the cloth room, not sure)

The problem is (and yeah it's a problem) I'm not really bothered with Poser crashing. It's an expected behaviour L  Of course I HATE when it happens after I haven't JUST saved my work, but all Poser versions I've had, since Poser 4 and onwards... have crashed from time to time.. so it has become "expectable".

That said, I think I've had Poser 8 crash a total of 4 or 5 times by now, and I've been using it quite extensively ever since it was available. 

So if someone is expiriencing more frequent crashes.. there must be something that triggers it. And I'l like to know what it is so I can avoid it L

It's like at home where I KNOW I'll blow a fuse if I have two of either microwave, electric kettle or dishwasher plugged in at the same time. I KNOW this.. and still I manage to blow a fuse from time to time (and it shuts down my server/router/firewall as well as mine and hubby's computers... and that ALWAYS happens when I haven't just saved....) - that is expected behavious ... so I know how to avoid it.. Likewise I'd like how to avoid Poser's crashes :)

Try reducing your Acceleration for your Video Card... if that does not work, contact Support with your details...

I dont think that'll make a diference on SreeD.

I never render anything much with it so dont know about that part but the rest of Poser has been working fine for me.  I've had it lock up when it did not want to import a particular obj for some reason, never did figure out why. No crashes yet. Once it was acting strange in that every time I selected a body part the figure went flying off about 10 feet and crumpled up into a pile of twisted parts. That somehow fixed itself and never showed up again.

But other than that it all works pretty smoothly.

The only times P8 crashed for me was once when I opened a .pz3 which had been saved in a previous version and then proceeded to remove a figure from the scene it immediately crashed.   

And once more, after finishing a render - not a complicated one mind you, maybe about 35-40 min - as soon as I saved the image and then tried to switch from the render to the preview display it crashed. 

I have poser crash frequently after rendering. I also have had crashes in the material room. And a on one scene the preview shows conformed figure and changes to another figure but they don't render that way.