You're way out of line, now Zippy. Let's take these points one by one, shall we?

Quote - 1) You know very well  I've told you that for weeks I've been repeatedly loading my P7 runtime into P8, without crashing the computer, so there can't be a connection. You know that!

Now you're talking about a crash, but we were never talking about crashing. We were talking about how you felt your computer was being slowed down by Poser 8 merely being installed.

I asked you to install Poser 8, but not to add any content, and check how it works. You did that and it worked great.

Then, per my instructions, you added the P8 content, and it still worked great. Which means that installing P8 did not cause your computer to slow down.

Here's what you said regarding this:

Quote - I've installed only the 'current' P8 content, to the runtime in my documents folder. [...] I exit P8, and everything else on the computer is ok. At this point nothing including P8 is running slow.

Clear? Without your P7 runtime added to P8, everything worked great and you had no complaints.

Later I said:

Quote - OK, zippy, so P8 is running fine and you have all your P8 content just fine, right? So, we can safely say the thread title isn't right. ;-)

Now all we have left to do is hook up your other runtimes. This was why I earlier was so emphatic about not copying or moving runtimes into Poser 8, but just to attach or add them to Poser 8 as external runtime. I see by your response that you understand that, but I had to make sure. Since the whole thread was about a totally borked P8, I needed to make sure you weren't going to copy over it, since that is a common way to bork it up.

I would not add all your external runtimes yet.

I assume you understand how to add runtimes manually through the Poser 8 GUI, right? With the button that looks like a folder with a + and a running man in it. Click that, and add just the Poser 7 runtime - what used to be the main runtime for Poser 7.

Work with that for a while. If all is normal, then exit Poser, start it again, and work with that Poser 7 content some more. If you're comfortable that it is OK, then continue. Otherwise stop and report at any point where things appear to have become borked.

And you followed with:

Quote - Okay, Bagginsbill
I've followed your instructions to the letter, and only loaded the P7 runtime, as that's the only other runtime I've ever had.
And now we are back at square one, because after 8 minutes of indexing the P7 runtime (yes it took a full 8 minutes just to index the characters folder) it is now firmly stuck a third of the way through the poses folder. I waited 10 mintes to see if the indexing would continue, which it didn't, so I closed P8. Note, the indexing was extremely slow.

Adding your P7 runtime caused your computer to slow down. Something was chewing up the CPU, and it didn't happen in P8 until you added the P7 runtime. I wanted at that point to understand what your CPU was working on. I also asked you to clarify what you meant by "indexing". It was you who first used the word, not me, and so I wondered if you really meant "indexing", as in running the Vista Index service, or whether you were mis-using that word to refer to merely loading the content into the library GUI.

The reason this distinction is important is because P8 really does "index" your content libraries, via the Vista Index service. This is not something that P7 or prior ever did, and that is why they were slow and could not do a "search" feature. P8 finds content more quickly via the Indexing service and also provides you a way to search your content, via the Indexing service. My interest at that point was to find out of the Vista Indexing service was busy. I needed to see the process list, not the application list, because the Vista Indexing service is not an application.

Your next post was this:

Quote - I think I've found the solution to all this and I'm fixing it right now, because it seems to be working. Give me an hour to reinstall Poser 8. The problem is certainly Poser 7. Oh God, this is so embarrassing.

I assume that's when you found the duplicate copies of the P7 runtime. Which is fine, but you're assumption that the duplicates was a problem was incorrect. That's when I first explained the Indexing business and told you I needed to see your process list very badly to see what tasks were most active. My suspicion was that the Indexing was running, but I have no way to tell at that point or even now. It would explain why your computer was still busy even after closing P8. Other possibilities were that P8 never actually closed. I mentioned all this, and told you why I needed to see the task list. But you never answered that.

Instead you wrote:

Quote - Right. I've only just got back up again. Something terrifying happened to me last night. I managed to get both Poser 7 and 8 running perfectly. The P8 library loaded the P7 runtime very quickly. And then while I'm writing up a report for this forum my hard drive starts chattering away and up pops that Windows message saying my security has failed. Something had shut down all my security, even the firewall, and no matter what I tried I couldn't get the security working again, so I disconected the net and the hard drive then stopped whiring.

Now maybe it was a virus, or maybe there was a problem with the Indexing service gone haywire. I have no idea. But I do know that it is incredibly unlikely that the "virus" struck at the moment that you started to use the P7 runtime in P8. I also think it would have been smart for you to post the exact windows message so I would know what it said. There is the possibility that you mis-interpreted the message. For example, if the P7 runtime was in the Program Files folder and Vista with UAC didn't like Poser 8 scanning the Poser 7 program folder, then there was no virus. It may have simply been that Vista UAC was being super cautious and did not like Poser 8 scanning the contents of the other program. I know and you know that Poser 7 and Poser 8 are buddy apps from the same vendor, but Vista doesn't know that. It's normal behavior is to freak out when it sees one program poking around in the guts of another program. This is also why SM asked you to move the P7 runtime out of Program Files. But instead you confused "moved" with "copy" and complained that moving 9 GB of data would take a long time and you shouldn't have to do this.

Well, guess what? All the evidence so far suggests that it is Vista getting pissed off that P8 is looking at P7's runtime. Even though you told P8 to do that, Vista doesn't know that, which is one of the reasons UAC is so bad.

But all of this is conjecture because you stopped the process you and I were involved in.

Quote - 2)There's no point you complaining I haven't shown you active tasks, when you haven't thought of explaining how to extract the list. Just as smithmicro support asked for specific information, but never bothered to explain how to supply it. You know I cannot supply a screenshot of a very long partly concealed list. AND, you didn't ask to see it, you just said "I need to see it badly", which is not the same as "Can I see the list, and here's how you get it"

Wrong. I showed you how to get it in this post. I even included a screen shot.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3525874&ebot_calc_page#message_3525874

As to the very long list, I only need to see the top of the sorted list, sorted by CPU usage, since we're interested in knowing what process is using the CPU the most. Most people know how to do that - you click on CPU. I didn't know you weren't clear on that, but all you had to do was ask. You didn't ask.

Quote - 3)And now we are left with your opinion that my drives indexing is the reason my security got totally knocked out, when it has never happened before with P8, and certainly doesn't happen with P5, and P7.

Yes, exactly, that is my current theory. I told you to just answer my questions. You're not a software expert. I am. I have a 100 things in my head that I'm juggling with regard to what could be the problem. I don't feel I need to explain to you all the reasons, nor are you actually prepared to understand them.

This thing you just said is an example of your inappropriate belief that you are a better judge of what is possible or likely, versus what isn't. You say that "certainly doesn't happen with P5 and P7". Of course it doesn't happen - P5 and P7 do not do SEARCH. You seem to make judgements about what is possible based on the faulty assumption that P5, P7, and P8 are largely identical programs. They are NOT. P8's management and use of files and content is totally different from previous versions of Poser. You're not qualified to judge what it means if P7 did or did not behave a certain way. Every time you do that, you interfere with the process of getting to the bottom of the problem. That's why earlier I gave you a metaphor - I'm the doctor, you're the patient - just answer the questions. I don't have time to teach you everything about software. You're lucky I like you, or I wouldn't bother making this lengthy reply. You've become more trouble than I imagined you would.

Quote - 4)You know I didn't say I hated P8, I said I didn't really like 3D art in general. I made it very clear I still consider P8 an unresolved item, and not just for me, either. We probably have a bleak future to look forward to of problems with further upgrades, P8 is not the last. I haven't had a peep of a problem with CinemaXL, Carrera, Hexagon, Daz Studio, or any other 3D software that runs perfectly happily on my computers, and has done so for years. P8 is the only serious exception.

Don't quibble. Let me extract the key phrases that add up to "I hate P8".

Quote - I do not, repeat, not, like the new Poser interface. It is very ugly. I can clearly say I found virtually no difference whatsoever between its features and those of Poser version 7. So on that point alone, it was not worth the update cost. In fact I don't think there's any justification for updating beyond P7.

Even when the P8 library is working efficiently, it is still slow on my computer ... no need to change it IMO and that's another reason why the upgrade is to me a waste of money. I still suspect that the P8 library cannot cope with large and complex runtimes, and I seriously doubt that it was ever tested on a huge runtime like mine.

So, ugly interface, no difference in features whatsoever, not worth the update cost, waste of money. But that isn't summarized by the word "hate"? You have quite an odd way of expressing your love for P8, then.

By the way, you took a jab (as do so many others) at the testing process, saying that you don't think anybody tested a "huge" runtime like yours? Huge? 9 GB? We had one beta tester with 500+ GB of content, and another with  close to 1000 GB. Your 9 GB runtime is a toy compared with what we tested with. Your assumption that your runtime size is an issue is bogus, because you incorrectly assume SM are incompetent. Yes there is something different about your computer, but not about your "huge" runtime. LOL Don't think you're special just because you have 9 GB of content.

Quote - 5)I don't think it's occurred to you why I felt it essential to delete those extra 2 rogue installations of P7, because I thought it possible P8 was searching for all three runtimes at once. I remember from a long time ago that programs that get duplicated can screw up another associated program that is only linked to one instalation. That might well explain that P8 was slow because it was trying to load three duplicate runtimes at once, and that's why it speeded up considerably when I deleted those extra runtimes.

Are you the expert or am I? I know that adding only one of three copies of that runtime to P8 means that P8 only saw one copy, regardless of how many more were on your computer. Did you know that? Moreover, as I said above, the real issue is most likely the Vista Indexing service poking around in another program's protected area. After examining the task list and a couple other things, I was going to have you go into your NT log and show me the log entries for security and application errors. The most likely thing is we'll find that the Indexing service is jammed up getting exceptions and taking up a lot of time while Vista writes thousands of error log entries complaining about the constant security violations from P8 asking to see P7's runtime.

If you'd moved the P7 runtime out, which is another thing I was going to have you try (as SM asked) we'd have been able to confirm it as well. But we never got that far.

Quote - 6)Nowhere do you acknowledge that P7 works perfectly well on my computers, even it had a screwed up runtime, and was running, accordeing to you, on a screwed up computer! That strongly suggests to me that whoever wrote P7 managed to produce a program that is far more rugged and dependable than Poser 8 - or that P8 is intended for a computer that is far superior to mine.

I don't need to acknowledge that. I understand software and P7 and P8. I know what to think about and what isn't relevant. Here's what you are not acknowedging and why this process isn't moving forward. P8 is a different program than P7. It does new things that P7 never did. It uses components and services that P7 isn't even aware of. Got that?

Now I'm still ready to help if you can get past the fact that you need to calm down and do what I say. While you were doing that, we were making progress. Once you decided that you knew what the problem was (a virus) all progress stopped.
 

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)