Background:

My WinXP Pro desktop computer - on which I ran Poser 5-6-7-8 and PP2010, Blender, PSCs3, and heaps of other apps - finally decided the motherboard had reached its use-by date and refused to boot, anymore. I took it down to the local PC-hardware repair wizards who confirmed my suspicions... they've had it for the past 3 weeks "waiting for parts". So, in desperation - going through withdrawals - I tried loading PP2010 on this laptop (Asus dual T3400 2.16gHz, NVidia 9400m G -latest drivers installed last week- using shared memory, 2 gig RAM) running Vista 32-bit, SP2. It installed fine. When you tried to change to the face view with a generic V4.2 with morphs++ loaded, it crashed.

So, I installed Poser 7. To Program Files. Same thing.

So, I uninstalled Poser 7, and re-installed to My Documents. Same thing. Here is what I get:

I've read posts pertaining to Vista - lots of them date back to 2007 and 2008. There were those who said Poser ran fine, others said it's the OS. Should I give up? Is trying to marry Poser with Vista a lost cause?

Windows 7!!! Vista was a virus IMHO

Have you installed all the service releases as well? I run poser8 and poserpro2010 on vista64b for more than a year and I had only a few problems, I had poser 7 running as well, but I know there some problems but they were fixed with the service releases. AFAIK poser6 doesn't work with visa, but poser7 does.

best regards,

Bopper.

just a suspicion. try Sreed instead of OpenGL.

vista  32bit  works well with  poser 7 least it has for me

Thank you evryone for responding.

I'm currently running Vista SP2 and it automatically did an update and re-booted itself (whilst I was in the middle of something, which is classic M$ rudeness - wanna slap whoever thought that was a good idea) and I've updated the driver of the NVidia card (chipset) a week ago to the latest one in hopes of avoiding having to do SReed instead of OpenGL. Which is working, or so it seems: thanks Magnus.

Oh well. I least I can sort-of work. If I render, does OpenGL still get invoked or Sreed? Or is that just for preview mode?

Soon as I get my desktop back, this lappie's going back to the preferred OS I have running on it dual-boot: Ubuntu 10.04. At least it's polite and not ... Vista.

OpenGL and Sreed are for Previews only.

but that gives us a clue of what the problem is.  give this a try. under your Accumlation Buffer, try the other setting (one is Hardware. one Software) and see what happens (you'll need to switch back to OpenGL to test this)

Had me going a bit, but I finally found Accumulation Buffer - CTRL Y... it is set to software. I'll set it to hardware and see what happens and report back... thanks for your help, Magnus!

Right. Magnus, that solved it! Bravo.

So, for those using the dreaded and justifiably much-maligned Vista, go with Sreed if nothing else works, but try as Magnus suggested first: under Render settings, the Preview tab, select OpenGL, and under Accumulation Buffer, chose Hardware instead of Software.

This - of course - after you've check your RAM for integrity, updated Vista to SP2 (or whatever is latest), made sure your graphics driver is up-to-date ... all that sort of thing.

You can set Vista to "ask" you before it downloads updates, that will stop it installing and rebooting by itself..

hi all,

Win7 sure is an improvement over Vista, which in itself was a serious step again over XP in various areas, which again was a step over NT and Win2000. But Poser has its instabilities as well, and Windows Upgrade on the background is not its best friend, even if its not rebooting. So take Fixers advice indeed to keep the initiative.

Posers Achilles Heel definitely is in the video section, for years, for all OS's. OpenGL can run in hardware or software (the first is better, poser shows an unreadable green note in the Render Settings - Preview tab when its ok to do), if OpenGL falls apart SReed is an old alternative. All for Preview, rendering does not need a videocard at all. So having latest versions of Poser and the Videodriver help.

A special issue can arise when using cheaper or energysaving videocards, the latter as in laptops. This gear eats out of the system RAM-pool and reduces RAM available for user programs. Since Win will use 1 to 1,5Gb for system use (and more of the latter in the mentioned video-case), your 2Gb laptop will squeeze on system as well as user RAM. In that case, upgrading to 3 or 4Gb and NOT setting the 3Gb switch can be of help too. When facing problems, watch the taskmanagers monitoring results on total and user memory (performance and process tabs)

All this might happen in Win7 too, although it might have an improved memory management over Vista.

"All this might happen in Win7 too, although it might have an improved memory management over Vista."

not might. has. you can infact run win7 on a 1gb Ram Netbook (and it's sold in that configuration) without issues. (tho you'd not want to run Poser on it!)

Win7 is a different beast to Vista whatever some say. (it has the Kernel rebuilt, lower system requirements - in experiments, a user got it to run on a Pentium 2 with 512mb ram! I would not recommend doing that tho.. he just wanted to see if it could be done ;))

I agree with Magnus, win7 is a step ahead again and some of its major improvements are the resource consumption, RAM need for systems use and video / driver handling. And while IMHO Vista did make serious steps ahead over XP and 98, it does has some flaws as well.

This makes Win7 the current Windows OS of choice for laptops, games, life extensions for elder XP machines and ... Poser, since that one really suffers from memory and video problems since say version 5.

And actually I haven't heard of any disadvantages over Vista or XP, so it might well be the Windows OS of choice for everything. Since it crashes quite less, I just can't tell whether the crash handling is improved. But why not?

Update: whilst the solution worked the past 3 days, I have once again encountered exactly the same problem with the settings for Accumulation Buffer as suggested, and persistently so. Poser has once again stopped working.

Any other ideas?

I ran a Win 7 compatibility advisdor to check whether there were any problems with this machine. I also did a memory test - the extensive one - and again, no issues. A Windows 7 upgrade here in Oz that I am allowed to do with this machine (Vista Business) will cost me AUD$ 400.00. That is more than the machine cost me. This is patently ridiculous. I will not pay that sort of extortionary price to a company that created this horrible Operating System that refuses to run half my software.

I realise I'm not in a solitary camp: there are many that are upset with M$. However, here in Australia, we have the added insult of paying twice to 3 times the cost for technology as you do in the States. Now that the dollar is at parity, this really seems incredibly unfair.

have you tried removing the preferences files and having poser recreate them?

i have poser installed on vista 64 bit and it works fine have never had anything like the error messages you have got so am assuming something has got missed or not updated when you installed again?

hope this helps

@ Perilous: I have Vista 32-bit, and have had numerous issues with other apps, not just Poser. I have Windows 7 Starter on my netbook and it runs Poser 7 just fine. So, it is Vista.

@ Magnus: I've done as you suggested... gone to the Smith Micro KB site and found my prefs files and deleted them. At first that didn't do it, but then I also got rid of my preferedState.pz3 file. That did the trick. Thanks again for helping me getting Poser 7 working in this abyssmally poor OS.

I hated Vista. soon as I could I dumped it for Windows 7... which has been lovely. it's solid, well behaved.... I luves my Win7.

Well, at AUD$400 for the upgrade, I'm afraid I'm going to be stuck with this bloody mess of an OS... Thanks again for your help, Magnus...

After many pcs and years of bluescreens, blackouts and (above) error messges trying to keep Poser running,,, I finally have a pc that has yet to crash. It is Vista64. I spat at it for years hearing of invasive MS auto updates (spyware) and threats of shutting you down if you did not have validated software. F..kers.

Then I happened on this last clearance deal. So, I authenticated it online (5 minutes) and unplugged it from the internet for good. I port video driver updates and call in for software..

Three years later...

My point is sometimes your real enemy is the crap that gets dropped on your harddrive. If you can, keep a cheap old pc to take the punishment and keep your good one safe from harm.

Again, you have 64-bit Vista. I have 32-bit. I have very little else installed on this system because nothing will bloody run in this pathetic excuse for an OS.

As soon as I get my XP Pro machine back from repair, I will go back to Ubuntu 10.04 - a REAL OS that never gives me dramas (dual-boot on this lappie - Vista is too dumb to even realise it's there, although Ubuntu can read and write to NTFS just fine) and stay away from Vista altogether until the price of Win7 comes down to affordable. Which here in Oz will be a while.

Might have a go with VM-ware in Ubuntu so I can run Poser in Ubuntu - it was a bit too fiddly to set up before, but I hear it's become a bit cleaner and less irritating. Wine still has those active modal windows hiding behind inactive windows issue to run Poser anything reasonably well... tried it a year ago. I'm open to correction on that.