You're not the only one to have had this problem. I did as well and got the same responses from Smith Micro. I found what was causing my problems. It was a program called System Mechanic. When the dialog box freeze problem occurred, I opened task manager and located SManylizer.exe, selected it and ended the task and BANG, Poser unfroze, the dialog box was gone and all was well as if nothing had ever happened. Since I have disabled background analyzing, Poser 8 runs without this problem, actually, I don't get the FFRender crash anymore either.

The next time you contact Smith Micro, ask for a tester named John Csaky. He and I went at length about this and other registry management programs. One thing is certain, System Mechanic and Poser 8 don't work and play well with each other. I think I remember something about Firefox as well so the others are probably right but if you are using System Mechanic, disable all of the automatic features and use the program manually as needed. At least this was my problem and solution but Csaky walked me trough the process when the others there were screaming "change your video drivers".