Ok, I thought it was an anomaly to my old 10 year old laptop ... that Poser would randomly crash the computer. I have a new Dell, and it still crashes Windows 10. There are a couple questions here:

1. Will this eventually damage Poser?
2. Will this eventually damage my computer (and thus why I had to buy a new one in the first place)?

Any help would be great ... I did file a report.

Poser can't itself crash the computer, it doesn't have the necessary privileges to do that. What are you doing in Poser when the computer crashes.

Answering your direct questions...

No, it won't damage Poser. At least, not in the sense that you'll lose it forever. You may have a situation where Poser becomes corrupted and you have to reinstall. That could happen anyhow, with a sudden power failure or HD crash. Yes, you could - potentially - end up in a situation where you lose your Runtime(s), too. That's why you back things up, ain't it? You do back things up, don't you? No, me neither.

Damage your computer? Not in any significant hardware sense, no. Software... again, potentially. Any software that misbehaves - and some that work exactly as they should, in the case of malware - have the potential to do unpleasant things to your o/s and other important files. But that's always the case with any software running on any machine. The chances of Poser doing something seriously bad to your system are, IMO, vanishingly small. But yes, the potential is there.

Ok, the funny (not haha) thing is ... I'll be working along in Poser and suddenly the computer reboots, and I have to scan windows. (it just shut down the other computer). But it only happens when I am working in Poser. Poser is the common factor every time. There is no specific function, changing render settings ... opening a new file ... selecting a figure. More often than not it is during a render adjustment. But the fact that it does this on 2 machines, had me concerned.

Video card driver? Are both computers using nVidia video cards? Could be a driver conflict on both machines - is there anything common to both? Software? Hardware?

Ahhh... Are you a smoker? Is your computer near an open/frequently opened window? Shutdowns/reboots can happen if the processor fan and/or PSU fan become clogged with dust/dirt/general gunk, and it often happens during processor intensive activities. Smoking near a computer - as I used to - can exacerbate things. A poke around in there with a toothpick can rectify matters. With the power off, of course.

That could have been a problem with the old computer ... but I've only had this one for a couple weeks. Not a smoker, in fact I have an air purifier in the room ... I also keep a dust cover on the computer when not in use. It is on a wire rack for more ventilation. and the fan ... is quiet. (not like the last computer). The deal is ... this ONLY happens when I'm using Poser, no other time.

Boni, try poking around in the Windows Computer Management utility. Look under Events. Browse through the Application Events list. Take a look at the ones most recent in time. If it was a bad crash and auto-re-boot/scan, you will see those events flagged. Check the details on that item by clicking on the listed error event.

I have not had a serious crash like you have, but Poser does crash on my 2-year old machine. When I check, it is typically the poser.exe or the DLL related to nVidia card. Now, if your nVidia card drivers are up to date, there is nothing else you can do except to let Windows report the crash to their engineers automatically via internet, and wait for nVidia to make a patch publicly available ( has been the case several times for me ). The crashes involving the poser.exe have been reported automatically to Microsoft by Windows, but I have no idea if those reports get to Poser engineers. I do get crashes from Poser - as recently as 2 in my last usage session last evening my time. Nothing as serious like yours, tthough. Just a re-launch required inside Windows.

In Win7Pro/Ult, the Windows Error Reports (WER) will be in C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Temp. Copy any WER files you find there before OKing Windows to send the report, because Windows will delete the report after sending it. There may also be useful Poser and/or Queue logs in this folder.

I also have minidumps enabled, so that if Poser crashes, it generates a crash dump report (DMP). Those will be in C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\CrashDumps.

They sound two very different machines, agree with movida, what do they have in common other than Poser is the question. One thought is a power supply glitch, if the new machine is a laptop is it worth running off the battery to see if the reboot happens when not attached to the mains. Does the event viewer give any clues?

Here's a link to blue screen view (https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html) it'll open up the crash dump files and you'll see what file is causing the crash

Do you ever get the dreaded "the video card has stopped working and recovered" or a variation thereof? There's a sort of a fix for that one :)

My guees is what they have in common is there not big enough to run Poser. Dell lap tops don't have nVidia cards or any 3D cards.

What's the new n old lap top specs ? what version of poser are you running n what's the recommended specs for it.I never recomend the bare minume .

PC's are getting a lot more afordable now.

to run 3D app's you really need a powerful PC.

walmart has game ready PC's for around $500.00.

This my new PC's specs

GeForce GT 730_ Quad core prossesser 3.80GHz_ 8GB Memery_ 64bit win10_

Got this at wallmart for around $500.00 I know I'm a big spender ,LOL. it will run any 3D app. better 3D card for realtime render engines wouldn't hurt thou.

RorrKonn my Dell has nVidia graphics. I am using it as I type this. There is another Dell XPS on the desk in the bedroom with one as well. Don't speak with authority if you do not know of what you are speaking.

Boni you may be getting a TDR failure. Widows by default is set too low, about 2 seconds. For some intensive calculations this may cause a screen reset. Really intensive Superfly calculations can take too long to solve and the video card times out and resets. There is a thread over at the SM forum from some time back and possibly one here as well. A change to a material or a render setting can cause this in a scene that rendered fine previously.

where all just guessing at the problem here my guess was PC won't render then it's not big enough.n last I herd superfly leans more on core possessors then 3D cards. Boni didn't say dell gaming laptop n dells regular laptops most don't have 3dcards so don't tell me to shut up.

ok take the arguement outside gents

lets concentrate on the problem in hand.

I recently retired a Dell XPS 1730 laptop old enough that it came with Vista, and it had two nVidia GeForce 5950M GTX GPUs connected in SLI. It still runs just fine, but I don't need a portable anymore, and it only has a simple (not H/T) dual core processor and 8GB RAM. I also have a Vista-era Alienware laptop which has an nVidia Quadro 3600M GPU.

Poser's preview renderer depends on the GPU if you want to preview in OpenGL with hardware acceleration. Superfly will render purely CPU or purely GPU; you can choose what device(s) with which to render.

I just learned about this.Depending on the settings windows 10 will automatically restart when it up dates .I think a lot of windows version would. Think it will auto restart if there's a error also.

Win 7 Pro gives you an option to restart immediately, or delay it. AFAICR, all earlier versions did the same.

I have the nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card. I updated the driver and it crashed Poser Pro 11 big time. Rolling back the driver solved the issue...