I've never seen this message before. Granted it's a 77 meg PZ3 file.., but still. 48Gigs free disk space, P4 1.7 GHz, 512 PC800 RDRAM!?? The render setting were rather small. I don't remember a thread on Poser limits. What am I doing wrong? Thanks Pinto

Join the club, it's a Windows 2000 issue, I've been talking to CuriousLabs who have suggested it is a virtual memory issue, however their advice thus far have been unhelpful, but they are working on a solution, I suggest you speak to them to give them additional information. It is a problem they are getting more reports of. Seems to be Windows 2000 (and WinXP I will presume too). I can't render above 1800 roughly, varies with files. Best wishes Jody

yes I have the same problem and not only that if I can render larger after a few renders it gives the same message, I think it was noted that the program does not release the memory or something technical...very frustrating, I have 1gig ram which should be more than enough and I cannot get it to render relatively small files

Sometimes I get this eror rendering at 700x600! Of course I only have a P3 600 512mb with 70 gig free.... I've found that if I open a new scene with just posette in default pose tex etc and do a render, I can carry on as normal.... don't know if it would work for you, but I am on win 2k as well, so its worth a try.... :)

Actually, I got it yesterday. I knew it could do it because I'd just rendered one version of the same file with hair and now I was rendering without. I removed some files from the drive that has Poser installed on it. Then the file rendered fine. So it must actually be disk space. See if you can remove some files and try it again. My file was rendering in 300dpi, 2000x2000 with Victoria 2 and CleoHair. And I'm on W2K. Hope it helps! JetM

Has anyone set the virtual memory size, to other than that Win 2000 sets during startup? On starup Win 2000 will set the swap file size, in comparison to your RAM size. You can adjust it within System Properties. Cheers

I set my swap to about double what was the default size and moved it from my system drive, as recommended. Still got the error. Only thing I've seen that affects it is physical disk space

Cheers... that was the first thing I tried... I hope that Poser isn't using 4gig of Virtual memory to render a 3meg poser file ;) and before anybody says anything I did try shutting everything else down.... It would appear that it is a memory leak when you repeatedly render the same scene... and like I said before just rendering default posette seems to clear it .... has anybody else tried???

Actually, I did try rendering a new image after getting the error. Got the same thing until I removed files (OK, I'm redundant here). BTW, I've got 512 of RAM so I really doubt I'm running out of RAM

Yeah. I get this, also under Win2K. I've tried /everything/ and nothing seems to consistently fix the problem. I reported it to CL about a month ago. Didn't hear back, but I guess they're still looking into it.

Thank you for the responses. I removed some objects from the file and it rendered fine. It only reduced the saved Pz3 file size from 77meg to 71meg but it made the difference. From your responses, now I'm surprized this is the first time I've run into it. Thanks Pinto

Heya, I have had the same problem from time to time. (running win2k, 1 gig ram, 60 gig hard drive, 1534 page file) Here is what I do to fix it, hopefully it will work for you as well. Open the render options window and set the render window size to something small, like say 640x480. Close the window, and save the file with the new render setting. Open the render options window and set the render window size to what you want to render and render now. I don't know why it works, but for me I have always - thus far - been able to correct the prob this way.

Oh, one more possibly related observation. I never had this problem under win2k when I was running a dual boot system and was running Poser in win2k under Fat32, only since I have started running Poser in NTFS. Maybe just a coincidence, but... Anyone out there running win2k on a FAT32 drive having this prob?

I run with NTFS too, good idea.

I have the same problem under win2k with FAT32--for me it's definitely related to free space on the drive with poser on it. I just move random stuff to another drive and then it lets me render. Oh, and even with a lot of free disk space, if you have photoshop or another app open that uses that drive for a "scratch disk" it may be hogging space invisibly. So make sure everything else is closed unless you explicitly direct your other apps to other drives. I don't use NTFS because if you blow your machine up real good you can't just throw the drive in a new machine and start grabbing stuff off it...

Good point black-canary about Photoshop, although, as you hinted at, Adobe do advise that the Photoshop scratch disk is kept on a different partition to that of your operating system. Cheers

Yep, my OS is on C: while poser and photoshop are installed on F: --photoshop uses F, E, D, and C for scratch, in that order, the big hog!

While you are on the subject, let me ask you guys about Photoshop. This new Dell system just has a 60Gig hd. With all new os handling large hds do they all come without any partitions? When I asked tech support about using something like Partition Magic to create a drive for Photoshop I was told that they create problems. With everything lumped together, Im sure Photoshops efficiency is suffering. What do you guys do? Thank. Pnto

"Im sure Photoshops efficiency is suffering." It's not. Of course, I would personally still partition the disk, but that's just me :) The issue is not that PS wants a different partition, it is that it wants a different hard drive - that way the OS and photoshop don't content for head placement ont he spindles. Multiple partitions on one drive (with one head arm) won;t help that.

Apaert from that, Adobe does say that keeping the Photoshop scratch disk on the same partition as your OS, may cause your OS to become unstable. Cheers

If you have photoshop scratch on the same partition as your OS it can totally fill your disk, which could cause a system crash because the OS generally needs some free disk space too. I believe you can restrict photoshop to a certain amount of space though, so you can make sure to leave breathing room for your OS.

After install, the initial Photoshop startup warns if it is on the startup disk that performance will suffer. This is just based on filling it with it's temp file? Is Partition Magic safe or should I just leave it like it is? There's over 40Gigs free. Thanks Pinto

Thanks ronknights, I haven't been at all impressed with W2K either. Pinto

Thanks Ron, What about the privacy issues on XP? I have Office XP on this system and if you do not activate it by the web or phone call to Msoft it will only run 48 times. And this is after you have entered the proper ID numbers! I read something about MSoft modifying the program to address the privacy issure that have been raised. Pinto

Thanks for the information Ron, and good luck on the job hunt. Keep in mind that there is always a spot for good, capable people. You gotta keep pounding on it, but if you can present yourself and your talents properly, you'll find a spot. Pinto

Ron, If you think you are too old now to follow your dream, how old will you be in ten years if you don't. Pinto

Ron, Wrong answer. The question was, how old will you be in 10 years if you follow your dream or if you don't? Most people would say the same age, so go with the dream. But that's actually wrong too. If you follow your dream you'll be much younger and without the regrets. Take it from one who knows. Regards Pinto

I haven't seen that message since I loaded XP. Whoo-hoo!

SergeantJack, Is XP compatable with all W2K compatable programs, or is there more program upgrade expense? W2K cost me a fortune in program upgrades. Thanks. Pinto

Hello there, after some intense investigation we believe we have a work around. It turns out that Windows NT 4, 2000 and Windows XP must be using some space for the pagefile.sys file on the same partition that Poser is installed, to render large images. The pagefile.sys is the virtual memory or temp space for Windows. An approximate minimum would 10 MB. This amount might have to be increased for more complex scenes and animations. The maximum should be 10 MB or greater. To modify the Virtual Memory: Windows NT 4 = Right Click my computer. Click the performance tab. Click change. Click the drive Poser is installed on. Enter 10 in the Initial size field. Enter 10 or more in the maximum size field. Click set. Click OK. Click OK. Click OK. You may have to restart the System. Windows 2000 = Right click My computer. Select the Advanced tab. Click Performance option. Click Change. Select the drive Poser is installed on. Enter 10 in the Initial size field. Enter 10 or more in the maximum size field. Click set. Click OK. Click OK. Click OK. You may have to restart the System. Windows XP = Click Start. Right Click My Computer in the menu. Select Properties. Select the Advanced tab. Click Settings, next to Performance. Select the advanced tab. Click Change. Select the drive Poser is installed o. Click the Custom size button. Enter 10 in the Initial size field.Eenter 10 or more in the maximum size field. Click set. Click OK. Click OK. Click OK. You may have to restart the System. Poser will now be able to render up to its maximum size of 4090 pixels x 4090 pixels @ any resolution.

Kewl!!!! Thnx :o)

I have them both set to 3072, and I'm still getting the message.

Also, I tried resetting the resolution to under 600 x 600, saving, reopening, resetting my resolution and rendering (as suggested above)... still, the same message!

Attached Link: http://www.shistudios.com

Attached Link: http://www.shistudios.com

It's worth noting that I have not had this problem ONCE under Windows XP, under 2000 I used to get it all the time. And NO, I do not have a pagefile on the same drive as poser.

"Is Windows XP using all that space for swap file, and leaving no more space for other uses?!"

You can specifically set the min/max sizes for the swap file... this has been a feature of Windows for a long, long time. It is very easy then to know exactly what space windows is using for it's own purposes.

Splitting a drive into partitions is certainly something experience will help with, but it is worth noting that partition sizes can be changed (carefully!) after the fact if need be.

Certainly, it is no more dangerous than mixing your data and OS on the same partition - what a nightmare.

"Unfortunately I do believe that many new computers come with all your stuff on one partition in one hard drive."

This is sadly true, fortunately there are good utilities that can fix this :) For that matter, in most circumstances WindowsXP can be used to adjust partition sizes on it's own.

Of course, the first thing I do when I set up a new box is format it anyway. It's much less painful than doing it later.

"I am thinking that when we tell Windows what to do with the swap file, we might be causing problems."

It's possible, but in my case I know it's not what happened. I track my system memory usage and under 2000 I had plenty of swap space left when poser said this. This is almost certainly a Poser bug.

"I've seen this whole subject debated a lot, and it still comes out that we don't always know better than the operating system."

The operating system does not make particularly complex decisions on this... it will grow the swap file up to a mandated limit at need. Swap space needs are fairly easily monitored and predicted.