Hi everyone - I've been posting a bunch of messages reagrding problems I am having with Poser and windows 2000. Thanks for being patient with me on this. I see that there are a bunch of problems with Poser and Win2K for other people too. Mainly, for me, the problem is that poser runs really slowly (it takes minutes to swwitch between libraries - e.g. in poses to go from "Pose Sets" to "Creative Pose Sets." I have a high end machine with lots of drive space - 60GB HD space (30 GB still open), P-4 1.8Ghz, 512MB RAM. I have 3GB of Poser stuff in my Geometries and Libraries. Anyone else have this issue? If not what have been your issues with Windows 2000? Thanks. Aharon

Do you use NTFS or FAT32 on your Poser Drive? I had NTFS on my D: (Poser) drive when I got my XP computer, & noticed problems with slow access, wierd access denials, etc. Converted it to FAT32, & most of the problems cleared up. Also, to scan & Defrag your drive regularly often helps.

It sounds like a really fragmented drive, or just plain windows being messed up. I've been using 2k for some time now (I refuse to use anything else), and I have no problems with it. And just for sake of mentioning it, I use NTFS. No reason not to, for me at least. I'd go with the suggestion to try and defrag first. If that doesn't do it, you may have other problems. Then again, my Poser directories aren't filled as much as yours are, so that could be a problem as well (dunno, anyone?) Oh, running service pack 2? If not, get it.

I'm running Win2k Pro SP2 with only 128 MB ram on a Celeron 700 (20gb HD - 9 GB free)... Poser runs great except for the fact that I try to render high res images with high res maps on occasion. My Poser Directory is only about 2.5 gigs. I get a few errors every now and then about the "Display size is too large. Creating the next best thing" and poser doesn't show the actual owrkspace. Other than those 2 things poser runs pretty fast on my comp. Also make sure there isn't other memory consuming apps running. Poser don't like any other apps running, on my machine anyway.

Hi- I am running Win2K SP-2. I only have one drive, and it isn't partitioned, alas. I am going to Defrag tonight. I hate to sound inept, but how do I know if I am using FAT32 as opposed to NTFS. What are the pros and cons of each? How do i convert? Thanks everyone! Aharon

You can find out if it FAT32 or the other by Opening My Computer and right clicking on your C drive and selecting properties. It will show you which it is in that window. How to switch is beyond me sorry. I run Win2k SP2 with 785 megs of Ram with Poser on a 6 gig partition and have no problems, but as they say, defrag regularly.

You should probably be running NTFS. It is a faster and more robust file system. There is a conversion utility which will convert a FAT (old) or FAT32 (Option added for Windows 98) to NTFS. Read the article in the attached link. I have no performance problems. I am running Win2K SP2, & Poser 4.03 update on an Athlon 1GHz, 256 MB PC133 RAM, 11.1 GB C: partition with 685 MB free space. In Poser, I have 684 MB/1409 Files in Geometries and 3.43 GB/17,600 Files in all the libraries. You might try defragging first and then perhaps convert to NTFS if that is not what you have now. Also, try stopping any programs running in the background like virus checkers and see if that helps. Minutes to switch seems way way too long. You might want to talk to a tech about your problem. There may be other hardware or Windows setup options that need to changed. Link won't fit in box copy and paste url in your browser - no spaces. Refers to Win2K Server but should be the same for Professional http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.htm

to convert to NTFS on the fly Start->programs-> Acessories-> command prompt type in: convert c: /fs:ntfs you should always back up your hard drive before doing this- i had no probs converting on the fly but you never know. Alos - once you convert over to ntfs- there is no going back unless you re format and reload windows. The change will take effect on reboot.

I see that FAT32 only supports around 30GB under Win2K. So if you have 1 60GB drive set up as drive C: then I imagine you have NTFS already. Unless you have a specific need for a partition that big, you might want to break it up into 2 30GB Drives which may help performance. Find a techie at work or school to help with that if you know zilch about such things. It may be fragmentation, I've just never seen that big a performance hit under 98, NT or 2000 and I'm very lazy about defragging. You can go here: http://www.oo-software.com/ and get a freeware defragger which is supposed to be better than the built in one.

Heyn there i agree i use 2k and it is in fat32 and i dint haqve any problems cherrs dolly

Using Partition Magic, I converted my NTFS drive back to FAT32. It doesn't deal with drives or partitions over 80 Gig, so to convert my 120Gig H: drive, I bridged it back to my old WIN98 computer to re-format (After backing up to an external firewire drive). XP & WIN2K don't have any problems dealing with large FAT32 volumes, but MicroSoft, (in accordance with their latest agenda) crippled their FDisk/Format utilities so you can't CREATE a partition over 32 Gig under them. I got disgusted with NTFS quickly when I analyzed how much of the system resources were gobbled up with it's "MS Office-esque" constant file indexing. Also the nitwit networking kernal isn't capable of understanding that on a stand-alone machine with only one user, there should never be an "file unavailable as it's in use by another user"-type error. I found that nearly any file I opened in any app was locked if I tried to re-open, move, or delete it again (never seemed to unlock a file once I closed it). Very tough installing nested Poser distribution Zips if the OS won't let you move a file or folder after viewing the ReadMe.txt in wordpad. after getting "file in use by another user" errors 154 times one afternoon, I gave up & re-converted to FAT32. Problem hasn't occured since. As an OS, WIN-XP has exhibited TREMENDOUS STABILITY!!!!(Poser lockups have completely disappeared, except for a couple when searching for a missing OBJ file), but the Networking kernal is remarkably retarded. And NTFS seems totally preoccupied with exhaustively indexing & tracking humungous tables of irrelevant info on every file. Anyway, that's my experience.

you can turn indexing off. start->file find-> then towards the middle of the left panle, just turn indexing off.

er panel even ;P

That was one of the first things I did, just slowed down File searches & file-finds to glacial slowness (searches under FAT32 are 6-9 times faster by my timing). Didn't help with the file locking. Bought 6 books at the local Barnes & Noble on WIN-XP so I could tweak & configure it to my needs intelligently. Took some work to slap it down so it stopped trying to force me to do everything Microsoft's way. Used Tweak-XP, Customizer-XP & X-setup to adjust a lot of elements & options that MS didn't put ANY controls in the OS for (like deleting Messenger, turning off the incessant nags to sign up with MS passport & MSN, and trimming the 54 or so background services down to the 8 that are all that really need to be running).

uhhhhhhhhh wow! i dunno why i didn't have all that happening. you are on xp? under ntfs when all that happened? Maybe that's the diff between win2k prof and xp? i was win2k pro fat32 and was experiencing lock ups etc but when i went ntfs, all of it stopped- until i had to go play with stuff i shouldn't ;P- i orig only had 27 background ops running- now i run 35 but it still doesnt seem to bother anything. Not sure why what runs good on one system totally foobah's another ;P

My Win 200 runs fine, FAT 32 though. Used to be NTFS had a 7 1/2 GB limit for the boot drive, I don't know if that is still true. I saved and opened a 470 Mb PZ3 file, and rendered it, so I think it is pretty stable. I don't see any real advantages to NTFS except for setting drive access privleges. I refuse to play Bill's game of "Change your OS every time I need the money", BTW!

that has changed, i have a 20 gig boot drive. i have 3 physicle drives total of 120 gigs divided into 6- 20 gig drives. I partitioned only to make defragging easier and to make dedicated swap drives. one is dedicated only to photoshop- one has poser only on it, one is my boot up drive, one has live jobs on it, the other two are not used yet ( i let photoshop have them for swaps for now, until i run out of room). I understand about changing the os tho ;) i used dos 5.0 until win95b came out then held onto that os until May of this year, when i went to win2k pro. I was getting too many "your os is too old to support this application" type messages. i hate upgrading os' and won't until i am absolutely forced to.

Umm, people, I am full of mixed emotions here. I thought about arabinowitz's problem when I was falling asleep last night. (now isn't it weird what goes through your head when you're trying to sleep?) I thought "maybe I should ask if he's defragged his hard drive. No, he surely knows that basic stuff if he's pro enough to have Windows 2000 Pro." No pun intended. I ran Windows 2000 Pro for awhile before going to Windows XP Home Edition. I visited the Windows 2000 newsgroups. The attitude there is if you have that operating system, you should be an expert in all the related information. Windows 2000 Pro is for the professionals. They won't answer a lot of basic questions because "you should already know this stuff." When you come down to it, defragging hard drives is elementary, basic computer survival skills. That's been around since DOS days. Windows XP has all the power of Windows 2000, but it is much friendlier for those of us who are not quite so advanced as the network pros. That's why I switched.

HA! ron- wait till you dream about texturing- then you know you have arrived! ;D

Well this morning before I woke, I was dreaming about something to do with either creating, assembling or rendering a Poser character. You know how muddled your recall can be after a dream. I remember hearing the wife get up to go to work. I rolled over, held onto the dream and drifted off a bit.

• Looking Sheepish * I didn't even think about defragging. I'm no expert, but I do know a lot about this stuff - not a single other program was running slow, so it didn't eve occur to me. I defragged, and it seems a lot better, but I don't have the time until friday to make sure. Thanks everyone for your help. Aharon PS: I don't know that much about Win2K, but NT didn't support some of my hardware so i had to get it. Millenium is a joke.

Well, I took the time to check. I figured, either way I'm going to lose sleep... Anyway, poser is moving faster, but I am having trouble with figures that contain changing geometries. Though, now it doesn't lock up, but it takes 15 minutes to load one in. Looks like I am going to have to remove a lot of what's in my libraries... Thanks again everyone. Aharon