Ok.
Whenever I startup Poser 8 on my new laptop, and mouse over the preview window (ya know where you work) it turns black!
I'm not too sure why its doing this! I double checked the website and it says it is Windows 7 compatible.
Anyone else havin any problems?

That sounds like it could be the Video Drivers are acting up, when did you last update them?

ps what sort of video card does your laptop have?

 it is a brand new laptop. I dbout it has a seperate graphics card.
I have only had it a few weeks.
These are the specs:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01896964&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us〈=en&product=4051830

I thought it might be one of those Intel integrated chips, The preview window is usually set to OpenGL mode by default, change it to SReed & the problem "should" go away. If not then updating the video drivers will be the best option, Windows has some "safe" drivers at startup so you can actually use it, but they're nowhere near being up to date.

Have you got an external hard drive to go with it? that 320Gb is going to fill up fast. ;)

I've noticed my preview screen does that from time to time. I'm on Vista 64 bit. Maybe it's after a recent MS patch or something? My version of P6 seems to recently get the case of "I'm going to zoom out...no I'm gonna zoom in...no I'm gonna zoom out" I get that on a regular basis now too. That's usually after I've added something like a clothing item or pose. Or I'll get the change the pose and the figure moves but everything else that's been conformed, stays in the old pose. Then it's like "Oh we've moved!" and they snap back to where the new figure is. Some times I have to change camera angle for the items to catch up. Just little weird things.

Thanks Lucifer, I'll try that. And yes i do have an external :)
I actually have my runtime saved on it so that i can work between pc and laptop without any problems lol. It is a 500gb MyBook and i have another one that is 320. So I'm good there :D
I'd like to trade both of those for  a 1t one.. its only $99 at walmart at the moment  XD

Nosiferret,
i had that problem with the clothes on XP. I reinstalled and it stopped.
As for the black screen on the laptop, it does that with nothing in the scene :( as long as my mouse doesnt move over the preview/work area, its all good. but once i mouse over it.. it goes black.
I have tried reinstalling it and still the same.
Could it be that it was installed into the wrong "program files" folder... ya know vista and windows7 has 2... which i think is dumb but oh well lol

I had nothing but problems with Poser when I installed it to the Program 86 folder in Vista. I couldn't find the installed items I would add later like clothing etc, it was like Vista reorganized everything to its liking and not mine. So lots of people have suggest to install Poser directly to the C: and I haven't had any problem, except for the occassional funny stuff that I mentioned above.

It's funny, I keep reading where people say don't install to "program files" but I did & it hasn't played up at all, I keep just the standard content that comes with Poser there & install everything else to external runtimes though.

 i dont know why people say that lol. but your suggestion to change the preview from open gl worked!!!!
thanks a ton!