What are the top ten reasons Poser would hang at render time without even doing anything?

I had to free up a core just to be able to shut it down

I've ruled out my textures as causing a problem.

I changed the lights to one spotlight, I changed the Depth of field and fstop.

Any thoughts?  I know, not enough information but what are some things you've generally seen over the years that would cause a hang?

 I'm really trying hard to refuel some passion for this program but damn, every time I try it's nothing but a bowl of frustration 

What are your render settings?  Push them too high and the system can protentially hang.

     It hung after completing SSS pass?  I've never encountered that.  What version of Poser, with what SR?  OS & system specs?  Did you notice if it seemed to approach RAM limit?

I appreciate all the questions but honestly if I have to answer them I'm going to blow.  Suffice it to say I have six cores and a motherboard to rock it, and I don't remember how much ram exactly but it's a lot and it's fast.  Pro 2014 64 bit SR 3.026 or something.  Arg.

Make sure "Render to separate process" is checked in your general settings.

Laurie

“… I changed the Depth of field and f-stop"

If you’re using render DoF and high samples that could be the cause - while it’s faster now compared to previous versions, raising the number of samples will dramatically slow down a render in my experience.

Okay, so, it seems like if you change fstop and/or focus distance poser becomes totally hosed.  Nothing I do will restore the camera to normal, and I'm producing extremely lagged renders that look like someone is trying to beam up midway through. 

This must be some sort of bug or massive user error on my part. 

I'm happy to think with you, but I do lack the info to do so.
?1 do you use IDL lighting. The IDL pass can be slow as well, and telling about issues. I've the impression you don't and use direct lights only.
?2 is Task manager telling you anything (cpu use, ram use, nr of entries, ...) and are you rendering as a separate process
?3 render subpasses withing firefly are:
 = loading textures (takes time when you've got a lot and texture cache hasn't caught them yet). Lots of disk activity but not that much ram usage.
 = geometry handling (takes time when you've got loads of subdivision, displacement map, etc). Now your ram will go up.
 = rendering on a per-block basis. Hotspots will reveal as rendering goes on but publishing the block-results in the view window stops
So: where does it stuck

Knows performance killers:
 * materials with raytraced reflections while not being opaque (transparency >0.0 somewhere), especially in combi with IDL. Eyes, glasses, stones in jewelry. Refraction alone is like opaque.
 * max bucket sizes <16 (or >128)
 * displacement bounds set (much) larger than the displacements in your scene
 * pixel samples >4 (3 = display quality, 4= fine print). Required for DoF and motion blur only. Personally, I render a ZDepth pass (in Aux render data) and apply DoF in post. Much faster, much better result. The Firefly DoF noise keeps being grainy at any setting.

So, please help us to help you. 

We are up to SR5 with PP2014.  I suggest you update.

you can put an image capture your renders setting?

ps.I do not think it's that hard to find out how much RAM does your machine

Are you talking about a complete stall or a long hang?  I have a scene that uses SSS across most of the image.  Sometimes it can hang for a relatively long time before rendering begins, other times the rendering starts soon after the SSS precalc finishes.  How much time have you been giving it before forcing it to close?  

Whelp, I think I just had my hopes too high and had some stuff set beyond where it should've been.  I took an older pz3 and worked with that one instead, and render times are happy and I was able to do what I wanted to do.

Yep, applying DOF in post is much faster and much easier. Plus you get to preview your adjustments. 

I haven't had Poser fail in a render since I got 12GB of RAM. I've certainly used all the available RAM in a few renders, but never had it hang for long. Certainly, Poser does sometimes take coffee breaks, though. But I find that if I give it some time, and check task manager to make sure I'm not exceeding my system's capacity, rendering is fine.