This just started earlier this week and I am unsure of the cause. It is affecting ALL of my installed versions of Poser, which include: Poser 6, Poser 7, Poser Pro, Poser 2010 Pro, Poser 2012 Pro, Poser 2014 Pro. So likely it is something that has become corrupted in the OS. I am hoping to narrow down possible causes that would affect all versions in this way. The affected Machine is an Intel Core 2 Quad, running Windows XP 64 bit (yes it is an older system). It was working fine for the past 2 years since converting from a render node to replace my dead workstation. Now, when I load ANY scene or create a new scene and send it to render, at some point in the render the entire machine reboots (and does so several times failing to successfully return to windows unless powered off).

I have run Virus Scans and Rootkit Scans and the system is clean.

Since Renderosity now owns Poser, I am hoping to get some help from here, as I am unsure where to submit a bug ticket now.

If its actually rendering the scene as opposed to preparing to render when the crash has occurred the first thought is hardware like RAM or power/heat issue. If you haven't already done so have a look at the event viewer system and application logs. I think the command to start the viewer is eventvwr.

I tried to take a took a look at the logs, but it is not showing what is causing the crash unfortunately. Long ago I disabled the auto-reboot on crash in Winxp on this system as well, so I should be seeing a blue screen with errors, but I am not. This whole situation has me baffled. I have memtest running right now, wont know what that yields until tomorrow. I really hope it's not hardware - I can not afford to replace hardware right now.

Another suggestion is to open up the case and blow away any dust that might be covering the cpu and blocking the vents, if you experiencing warm weather at the moment it may be causing over heating issues.

The following are dumb suggestions, but I literally just got done answer a very similar post in the DS forum, so...

...has anything changed recently (if you have Windows 10, you might not know if it has or not, so check your Windows Update history This is because by default, Windows 10 will sneak in and patch stuff without you knowing it, unless you go way out of your way to tell it otherwise.

Oh, and Microsoft really has a hate-on for nVidia, so it will blow away any nVidia-built drivers and replace that driver with a Microsoft version, which tends to break stuff... hard. Blame it on a WHQL spat between nVidia and MSFT.

...and now, for the copypasta bit:

Note - this is true for any CG application... DS, Poser, 3DS Max, Lightwave, Modo...

(sneck for brevity - go to the DS Forum and look for the missing bit.)

Some things to help prevent crashing:

1. (prolly too late now for this one, but next time y'all go shopping) - don't cheap-out on the hardware - doubly so for anything with a GPU on it. Generic braded stuff and "House Brand" stuff might have a nice, fat price difference, but you only save money at the expense of time (time spent troubleshooting, time spent reloading stuff after it crashes, time buying replacement parts after that cheap part dies prematurely because it wasn't built to handle the abuse that CG application usage will always put on it... Stuff like that.)

2. If you have any drivers or other low-level stuff in your OS that is way outside of typical use, it'll sometimes gonna get in the way. For instance, I have a driver on my Windows-based laptop that allows me to read and write to disks formatted with Apple HFS/+ (so I can read all my old Mac disks.) This would be one of my first suspects if DS started acting wonky right after I installed the thing (especially if I had the installation or my DS/Poser libraries sitting on that external oddball-formatted disk.)

3. Only use approved drivers for the stuff DS relies on. For example, only the latest stable official nVidia driver for the GPU (if the laptop/desktop-supplied driver doesn't quite work). Only vendor-built drivers for everything else (doubly so if you're doing this on a laptop.)

4. Could be a resource issue. Now if you have 32GB of RAM, an SSD disk, and a late-model i7/Ryzen processor? It's probably not a resource issue, unless you have lots of other resource-hungry stuff going on at the same time.

ironsoul posted at 10:21AM Fri, 02 August 2019 - #4358509

Another suggestion is to open up the case and blow away any dust that might be covering the cpu and blocking the vents, if you experiencing warm weather at the moment it may be causing over heating issues.

Not a bad idea, as CG apps can eventually blow out the thermals on a cheaper and/or older rig with insufficient cooling. You can still re-purpose the box as a kid's homework station, but its gaming/rendering days might indeed be over. You could delay the inevitable by putting in a nice GPU card and forcing all render to be GPU-only (Poser can do that, right?), but it's just a delay.

It is a hardware issue. Crashed during diagnostics last night and as of this morning I can not even get to POST or Bios. My workstation is dead - all work is now halted indefinitely for me.

Dude - good luck on your next trip to NewEgg, Fry's, Pricewatch, or...?

At this time a replacement is out of the question. This came at a very unfortunate time, there are no resources available to me to replace it do to life events over the past 8 months. Even if I were to try to convert this laptop to use for graphics it would be a huge step backwards and may only have weeks or months left itself (this is older that the workstation that just died).

Oh, man. That sucks.

If you're anywhere near upstate NY, I can give you my old desktop. It works fine, I just don't use it anymore.

It's a Dell XPS 15, about 7 years old. Windows 7 64 bit. Intel i7, 2.67 GHz, 12 Gb RAM, Nvidia GTX 260. Two hard drives, 1 TB and 1.5 Tb, I think.

@randym77 That's a very generous offer, thank you. I'm not really close, but I pass through upstate NY on my way to my family. The next time I would be headed that way is late August/Early September. To everyone who has replied, thank you for suggestions and tips. Please forgive my gruff demeanor, I suffer clinical depression and this is hitting me pretty hard on top of everything else I have been dealing with since December. I do appreciate the tips and suggestions. The official word from a technician is a bad Motherboard and a bad stick of ram. The drives, PSU, and CPU are good, as is one stick of ram. That still leaves the machine dead though.