Hi Noel,

I write software for a living. C++ stuff for a research group, and it can be a real PITA to find bugs.

Whenever someone sends me data that causes trouble, I have a small number of things I do to try and pinpoint the problem. I can't really help you remotely, and it sounds like BB is a good resource, but here are some times which might help you at least find a working solution while you await SR1.

1) KISS - Keep it as simple as possible. In one of your original pictures, you showed that you had two cores or CPUs both of which were completely MAXed out. When tracking down the source of a problem, you should always drop back to a low, safe place. A good first step would have been reduce to 1 thread only. If that works, step up to two. If 1 is good and 2 is bad...well, you have an answer:)

Since you only have 2 processors, if you are going to be using your computer while the render is being produced, you should leave 1 for yourself.

2) Memory - Ugh, memory sucks! And poser sucks it up even faster than we can buy it:P I'm guessing that your 2 GB is borderline sufficient. Firefox was eating over 300 megs, I think, with Poser using up over 800 and probably other things doing even more. If you are on a machine with limited resources (and today, 2GB is limited, sadly enough), you should be careful what you use. Try opening up that Activity Monitor and watch the memory levels while poser is running. Also, watch your machine's total memory consumption. Once you exceed a certain percentage of total memory, your machine's performance will degrade.

My little linux desktop had 2 gigabytes of RAM running a 64 bit version of the OS which happily used up every bit, and tried to use more. The end result was not even being able to type in commands at an opened ssh session (or a terminal session on the machine itself). It wasn't unusual for the machine to have lost critical services at that point, leaving a hobbled machine even after the process was killed. Reboot was the only way to recover the machine if it was starved for too long.

3) Whenever you report problems to a technical minded person, information is key. So, it's best to be as thorough as possible when describing the problem. It might take longer to type, but it will probably mean a solution will be found much more quickly.

Reformatting and reinstall is not a very meaningful solution these days. If that fixes anything, it was probably a settings issue for which there are much easier solutions (usually just deleting a single file, if you know the right one). Otherwise, it was a corrupted file, which means your hard drive might be sick, and the real problem is just a few turns away....

Back in the old days, Dynamic libraries could be introduced that caused programs to crash because old files were written on top of new ones. Windows and Mac both use a registry of sorts, and those too can become corrupted through various ways. However, modern versions of the OSs are mature enough to avoid most of those problems, and the rest can usually be fixed through far less drastic measures.

Hope this helps:)