It is something to to with the nVidia driver Time Out Delay settings. I may be mistaken, but the GPU something or other tells Windows to set it to 2 seconds, while the optimal is about 10 seconds, and yet users are cautioned it is not recommended setting, blah blah. There was a conversation in the Official Poser Forums about this, and IIRC, also here somewhere in Renderosity some years ago. I dare not fiddle with my Windows setting for this because it may affect the rest of my computer's operation. I, too have experienced dead rendering attempts.

Eternal Hobbyist