to a relatively unique combination of factors which makes it much trickier to track down a solution.<<

I would tend to agree with that except for two things:

1. It happened on my Vista / 32 bit system. In and of itself that's not unusual and it could have been as you said, various factors... yet....

2. More importantly, About 1 month ago I reformatted my drive, installed Windows 7, 64 bit, totally clean install with no A/V or any external apps from say Dell or HP or whatnot. Just the base package from MS.

I installed two apps in this order: Vue 8 infinite. Poser 8.

Poser 8 immediately started creating these files.

The only "uncommon" factor here then is Vue 8 Infinite. There was absolutely nothing else installed except Windows 7.