I've had Poser Pro pack with the lastest patches for quite some time now and I'm experiencing problems unlike I ever had before. It started when I got my new computer. A 1,500mhz ADM Athalon 512 MB RAM and 64MB G-Force video card. I keep having poser lock up on me when I load certain files. Sometimes it's a Simple Vicky model and sometimes it's when I try to load a figure or Figures in a scene with a lot of props. I don't get the "poser not responding" message when I do the Ctrl,Alt,Del. So I'm assuming it's working But I wait and wait.Does anyone here know what the problem might be? Funny thing is I have a street scene I made with over 120 props and it renders fine. As soon as I load some figures on it it won't respond at all. Just hangs on me. If I save the file it won't work again. I already tried saving and restarting the computer. Someone mentioned to me that Poser has a memory problem. I don't even think I'm using my full 512MB of Ram because windows 98SE doesn't even let me use it all. DEVON

You're probably pushing 98 too far :) I think if you go to XP you will see a big difference.

Will Poser ProPack work fine with XP? The reson why i didn't want to install XP was because of compatibility issues with older programs. I even had an instance last night where I was working with a smaller file that I know windows 98 can handle and I just changed the light settings and it hung up again. This all started not from windows 98 but from those dam ungrade patches. Ever since I got Pro Pack I've had troubles.

ppp works fine with xp :-)

No problems with PPP on NT 4.0 either. Cal

OK, I saw the first post in which Devon said 98SE won't let you use all 512 meg of RAM. What the...!? NOW it starts to make sense. I am having the same problems. At first someone suggested it was a boot sector virus, and they ran some software that cleaned it and the PPP worked fine for her. But I DO use an athlon 550 which will has to use 98se (I've never tried NT4 though, so I gotta look around Toms Hardware site for info there) rather than 98. I bought all this friggin' RAM and it's not even being used by 98SE? How much does it actually allow? Thanks

Windows 98SE will only allow you to use 64MB of RAM...it will also only allow you to run at 800MHZ....no matter what your computer tells you. Windows 98 was made before 1998. Remember back then how fast computers were? Nobody designed Windows 98 to run as fast as computers today because they didn't figure it to be needed for anything faster. By the time computers get caught up to speed they knew they would have a new OS out by them. That what Windows XP is supposed to be for NOW. Problem is will our programs run on it. I'd hate to take the chance but I might have now choice. I just want to figure out why all of a sudden I can't render my Poser figures now with Props or even figures by themselves since adding these upgrade patches. I have been finding out for other fellow Poser members that one of the underlying difficulites is the new Characters Vicky and Michael. Not the characters themselves but the large detailed texture maps that we are all gettting for them. They simply are not always rendering properly. This is where my first hang ups were coming from. DEVON I'm going to get to the bottom of this if it kills me. More patches please

This is an exceprt from an e-mail from a good friend of mine about his Poser Pro Pack problems: I've had the same problems with Windows ME (and I'm telling you that ME is short for Multiple Errors). It happens to me mostly while I try to multi-task during renders. Since then, I've learned to quit all programs other than Poser and leave the computer alone until it's done rendering. I've run across crashing sometimes with huge renders or more than 5 lights or the Vickie2 HiRes map-- I created a lower Res version that corrects the crashing. I have a 85mb .pz3 on my HD that renders okay but takes a while. I have a 1gig pentium, 512mem, 64mem ATI Radeon. I might be going back to 98SE because I get video/sound crashes and network weirdness in ME. For a while, I used a 98SE/WIN2000 dual boot setup. Poser, Vue and most 3D programs are much more stable in WIN2000. I thought about XP but don't like Microsoft licensing changes for it but there's some compatibility issues with some older programs and hardware.

The compatability issues are very slight and now that Max is solved I am a happy guy. Poser and PPP absolutely work just fine.

Attached Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14967.html

"Windows 98SE will only allow you to use 64MB of RAM" Who told you that? While some PC's may be limited by their chipset, all Win9x versions max out at 512K RAM because they choke on thier own design (see linked article and related MSKB at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP ). Your cool video card is probably hurting you right now based on what those articles say. Truly, Windows doesn't need all that extra memory it sucks up when you have lots of memory--it just takes it because Microstupid didn't design it to go on a diet when there's lots of RAM. I keep mine limited to a more than enough for Windows 64K (1.7GZ PIV 384MB). That leaves the rest available for other programs and I multitask lots of things at one time with no troubles. If you haven't alreadly done it, you should also consider activating the conservative cache feature (don't do this if you have less than 384MB of RAM!). Open the system.ini file in the Windows folder (make a backup first!) and find: [386Enh]. In that section, there should be a line that says: ConservativeSwapfileUsage=0. Change it to ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 (or add that line if its not there). Save the file and reboot. Now, Windows won't waste as much time messing with the virtual disk cache memory settings that you don't need very often anyway. I for one will wait for XP's inevitable fix it patch (it is a Microsoft product after all) and find out what existing programs it kills before I consider it. MS has admitted that they prevent some dll's from loading, ones they say affect stability but for some reason they don't want to say which ones they are. Uh huh. And which competitors products might those dll's belong to Mr. Gates? Anyway, a very savvy person just told me that he installed it and started getting Code Red and NIMDA attacks over his broadband almost immediately. I want to be sure they didn't make this beastie as much of a security sieve as their server products before I put it on my PC.

Actually it's 96MB of RAM windows 98SE will only allow you to use. And I stand by my story becauce I got it from a Microsoft certified engineer who works for a big Computer company. And I'm ONLY talking about Windows 98SE OS. I will however look into the article about the conservative cache feature. Thank you ...that might be my next option. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.

Noppers, It sound more like a Win98 problem. Win98 is a wanna-be Operating System, and Windows ME, isn't really an operating system. Go for Windows 2000. WindowsXP is a POS. Dispite all the lies... i mean, hype, it's hardware and software compatibility is lower then Windows2k. Don't forget about all of the bloat/junk that you get as well, and all of the RAM and harddrive space it wastes. Windows2k, is really the only way to go if you think about it.

Well if you read all of what I said above ....YES..I already know it's a Windows 98 problem. Windows 2000 is the next best thing other than XP BUT XP has much more overall improvements to make it warrented PROVIDING the compatibility issues are resolved. I'll wait for that. I just wish I knew this before getting this new computer and buying all those high rez textures for Michael and Vicky..that don't seem to want to work now along with those hugh scenes I created for my online comic. I think I'll try changing the Max File Cache settings in the system.ini file next.

"Dispite all the lies... i mean, hype, it's hardware and software compatibility is lower then Windows2k. Don't forget about all of the bloat/junk that you get as well, and all of the RAM and harddrive space it wastes."

Hmm.. Interesting POV. The XP systems we have here are running all the hardware/software we had been running under 2K without problems - and since XP can run any Win2K driver you might have laying around I am pretty unclear about the compatibility problems your discussing.

As for the bloat ... well it isn't all that much bigger than 2K and has some nice new features. With hard drives being basically free (38GIG for < 140$) I am not all that concerned.

Regarding post #10 from scifiguy, does it matter where the ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 line goes in the few lines of code that are there? I found the area of system.ini you refered to, and the line wasn't even in there, as you mentioned it may not be. Thanks!

In the Statment by scifiguy:Open the system.ini file in the Windows folder (make a backup first!) and find: [386Enh]. In that section, there should be a line that says: ConservativeSwapfileUsage=0. Change it to ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 (or add that line if its not there). I too did Not find any line like the above and I'm also wondering where I'm supposed to put it? Does it matter? At the top , middle, bottom?

And going with wahat soulhuntre said, XP is rock solid stable. Of course there will be compatibility issues. When 200 came out most software or hardware was intended for 98. 200o operates similar to NT. NT is a 32-bit system. Some win 98 software however still needed to access 16-bit drivers upon occasion in both NT and 2000, this would sometimes cause problems. So stop bitching about XP. If you want better, you have to dumb the old 16-bit software and use XP for the way it was intended. Same goes for 2000.

Attached Link: http://virtualtoybox3d.com

Hey Devon, since you were also wondering, I got hold of SciFi guy again, and he replied, saying I should just put it last in the lines of code for that little segment. Then if it doesn't work out, you can just go back in (probably in Safe Mode if it got really bad I suppose), and change the '1' back to a '0'. Well, I tried it, and I was actually able to load a 15 meg file. I haven't been able to get more than 5 to 7 meg poser zips to load. I got too brave I guess and went for one of my old 20 meg zips, and ka-Blue-ee (get it? heehee.)So thats it for me. I'm going to w2k tonight. And many thanks to SciFiGuy for answering back! You rock, man.

I'm glad it helped you taliahad. I'll probably just get windows XP and use that. I don't like experimenting with my system.ini file unles I know exactly what will happen.

Attached Link: http://virtualtoybox3d.com

OK, I just upgraded to w2k pro. And I've done quite a bit of research as a result, but basically 98se works best with only 64 meg. Even if you ad more ram like up to 96 meg total, 98se actually drops in performance by 20-40% because 98se does it's crunching via 'virtual memory', which if you know what you are doing, you can change somewhat in 98se. In w2k pro, the same deal, different numbers. 129 meg is the norm, unless you have 1000 or so employees hitting it up for internet and intranet mail duties and other apps being run from different locations. THEN you should 256meg!! So, I've had 512 meg on my computer all this time thinking that would help my P4 w/PPP, and my problem wasn't that I needed more ram. I needed to access more hard drive space, and much faster than I used to. w2k pro does that. I was able to change the size of virtual disk accessed from 768 meg (I think that was the number) to over 3gig. Now my renders are back to thier previously experienced huge files, with nice 1000x1000 anti-aliased renders. With an Athlon 550 it does this all quite well, but there is another discussion thats just started here mentioning having more horsepower in the cpu. That (DOH!)I had only vaguely thought about. That will be my next step. Upgrade to more cpu power with faster frontside bus speed. I don't claim to know everything by the way, but I sure as am learning. Anyway, as long as I've had PPP, it's only just now starting to open up to me because it finally has room in my system to maneuver.:-)

As far as RAM goes, read on: Walter Clayton wrote in message ... > http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/win98/reskit/part6/wrkc28.asp > > 98 can utilize up to "2G of real memory". There is a bug in vcache management that requires vcache to be limited to 512M when you install more than 512M or real memory however. The question isn't "Is Windows 98 recommended for up to 256M", the question is do you have a need for that much memory. That is something that only you can answer. If you have heavy paging activity then installing additional RAM will boost overall performance. If you're not paging heavily, the system will still make use of the memory, but you won't see much an improvement in system performance. Launch sysmon (start->programs->accessories->system tools) and monitor swapfile in use. If it gets over 15-20M and stays there (or higher) for extended periods of time, then you might benefit from more real memory. > > -- > Walter Clayton Microsoft MVP (MPS-D) & EZA > Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. This should clear up the memory questions. soccer coach