I am at a loss. When I originally purchased the new V2 texture from Daz, it would only render at full resolution w/bums once or twice and then lock up in future renders. The machine that I was using was admittedly weak (a PIII 850mhz w/512megs of RAM)LOL So, I just built a new Athlon XP 1800+ w/512megs of DDR RAM and a Radeon 8500 video card. I installed Poser fresh and then tried to render the texture. It worked the first time beautifully, then I added the flip hair and it locked up! I reduced the size of the textures by half and tried it again. It worked about 3 or 4 times in a row and then locked up again. This and the new hi-res Michael textures are the only ones that give me trouble. I am running Windows 98SE could that be the problem? Any ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance,

... it may be a Windows problem. Windows does not do a very good job of recovering memory. I suggest you use your Resource Monitor or System Monitor to see what is happening to your "available memory" while you render. I have had this problem and if Windows "thinks" it is running out of RAM, it may cause your program to lock up.

You might also save after each render, even if you dont intend on keeping the render. Sometimes that clears the memory buffer.

Windows9x has issues with large amount of RAM. It wasn't designed to handle huge amounts of RAM because when it was designed RAM was expensive and even 128MBs was considered a lot. Search MS' website for 512k and you will find several tech articles about it...512 is basically Win9x's "limit" so you're right there.

Basically, Win98 has finite resources, and what it does is gobble those resources up for things like the Disc Cache (the one that keeps track of what files and folders have been accessed recently so the next time they are accessed Windows can do it faster). That's why you can render several times, then Poser suddenly starts to freeze...as you worked, Windows sapped away all your resources until there weren't enough left for Poser to do its thing.

By altering your Disc cache settings you restrict Windows from being greedy and taking more resources than it needs. If you aren't comfortable editing your registry, you can get Cacheman from CNET and other download sites to tweak it (and other settings) for you. I don't let Windows take more than 64k of RAM for the disc cache. You can even get away with less...try different settings and see what works for you. Note that too low of a setting will make Windows go slow (has to seek out more files and folders more often) so don't go crazy.

In any event, note that this is not a fix all. High res textures require a lot of active memory. If you use a lot of high res textures and hi res characters like Vicki in one scene, Poser may still freeze up. Having reduced file sizes available is a good idea for those times. Win2000 and XP handle memory better and don't have as many issues with this, so you can always consider changing to one of those.

BTW: Poser is the only program I have that freezes up like this...I don't think it currently does that great of a job of allocating things either :(

Thanks for all of the help. I will try reducing the disc cache. I don't have anything running in the background when I render. The only things that are running are Poser, explorer and systray. I just saw geep's post on eliminating the dancing avi guy and will do that as well. If these things don't work, I may have to break down and install XP although I would rather stick needles in my eyes. Thanks again everyone!

... the needles! ;=] [just kidding]

... removing the "little dancing guy" does not necessarily reduce the amount of memory used, it just speeds up the render because Poser doen't have to take time (while rendering) to "play" the avi movie every time the little guy moves. ;=]

Get rid of 98 and install 2k. I wouldn't touch XP with someone else's hand, but some people love it. Some people also complain incessantly because it does stupid things. I can almost guarantee, however, that Bill is the culprit. Anything over 192 megs of ram is wasted by pre-2k Windows.

But then with win2k you might get the lovely "insufficient disk space to render at current resolution" -error every time you try to render something above 1000x1000. I never had that with win98 :(

Attached Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.asp

Well for what it's worth I touched Windows XP with my own hands, and although it's got its own specific quirks, it essentially fixed the same type of rendering problems. My first test was to put 4 Vicky's with Daz's high rez textures, a few Vicky's with StefyZZ's textures and a couple of Mike in the same scene. Rendered with no problem. Haven't had Poser lock up since then. I always feel the need to apololgize to Curious Labs, I was convinced that Poser was the culprit, when in fact it was Windows that caused my Poser woes.

Or maybe Curious Labs made some mistake in the code that didn't work well with Windows?! I had a brief conversation with them about a problem with Windows 2000. (Not enough disk space to render at this resolution, with 20GB free on the hard drive!) They mumbled something about virtual memory, and that was the end of that. I've only had that error once with Windows XP. I did a defrag (speed disk), and the problem ended. Ron

When I talk to Metacreations a few years back about memory problems and lockups and stuff. They told me during the conversation that fot temporary files Poser (don't remember the version number) used system variables TEMP and TMP to place thier temporary files. So, you may want to point these to the drive with the most space. I switched to Win2k, the difference is amazing.

Win 98 has issues anytime when more than 256 MB of RAM is installed. Believe it or not, your system, if you insist on Win98, would work more reliably by taking RAM out of your system. Go with Win2k, it solved a lot of my problems with Lightwave too.

Anyone who doesn't already have Windows 2000 Pro shouldn't go there. Windows XP is the current "new" version of Windows. Windows 2000 is for Pros.. If you don't have a big background in that stuff, you're pretty much on your own. On the other hand, Windows XP has the power, stability, the new stuff, and it is easier for dummies like me to handle! Ron

Just say to yourself slowly... Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacitosh Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacitosh Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacitosh =)

A few years ago I was almost sold on Macs. I worked for a major Computer Retailer, in Pricing and Availability. Every day several people would call to see if the Macintosh part, peripheral, modem, monitor, whatever, was available. Every day I told them no, then Apple would turn around and dump certain models or change the product lines. I got really tired of giving out bad news, and trying to educate my customers on the new model line strategies, etc. I can go into a computer super store and find a whole store full of PC stuff. I can build my own PC from scratch. You find a small corner of the store devoted to Macs. You have a computer company that doesn't seem to be reliable for their customers. Things may have changed in the past few years. But sometimes a company only gets one chance, and they lose. No thanks. Ron

Well, I dunno. Day after day, I see more and more complaints about 2K and ME and XP and rarely do I see a complaint about the unstability of OSX or 9 or even 8.6. I dont know many people who can get through the day without having to restart their PCs at least once, while a Mac reboot, while not completely rare, is at least usually not caused by the operating system deciding to have a little lie-down. I see people rail against Gates and MS -- and yet heres this other system over here: far more stable, far more reliable, and people turn their nose up at it because it costs a little more. Software companies bitch and whine about MS and what a pain they are to deal with, and yet Adobe decides to snub its long-time Mac supporters now when it comes to software in development (Of course, considering Atmosphere appears to have been a major bust, I guess thats no great loss, huh?). I guess its just one of those things Ill never quite understand about people and their computers.

"...and people turn their nose up at it because it costs a little more." I turn my nose up at it because it costs a LOT more for comparable processing power. The fact that they insist on building the Imacs, which I would otherwise consider getting as a second computer, into 15 inch monitors is annoying as hell too. But mostly, its because much of the software I want to use doesn't even have a Mac version, including many of the games I enjoy and some of the specific business apps I need to use.

turn my nose up at it because it costs a LOT more for comparable processing power A lot of that "comparable processing power" is spent on running your system, in case you didnt know. Mac architecture is such that it only requires half the megahertz resources to do what a PC does: this has been shown in countless comparison tests of, for example, intricate Photoshop computations. So yeah, on the surface it looks like youre getting less. Youre actually getting more. Insofar as price, consider how much time you lose waiting for that reboot. Tell me its worth the price difference. The 15" monitor... well, agree with you there, to a point. On my PC I have a 21" monitor. But Ive found that when it comes to image display, what I get on my 15", 72dpi Mac is truer in color, and -- for reasons that I dont understand -- command just as much percentage of the screen area as the 21" inch. Go figure. The Poser layout works out to be about the same, with the same access to dials and windows. The games -- well, lets put it this way. I dont have either my Mac or my PC for games. Theyre work machines. Thats all Im interested in.

Well as long as we're exploring the unfathomable, I don't understand why people grumble about the monopoly that Bill Gates seems to have and yet in the next breath will praise Apple. There sure aren't a whole lot of 3rd party options in either the operating system, software or hardware as far as Apple goes. MACs big selling point used to be that it was so much easier to use and set-up than a PC. Hardware and software compatibility problems rarely arise with the MAC because your choices are so limited.

grumble about the monopoly that Bill Gates seems to have and yet in the next breath will praise Apple Heck, I dont understand people who bitch about Microsoft and then tell me how wonderful IBM is. Like I say, I use both. The PC is almost guaranteed to need a reboot at least once a day. The Mac will run for weeks without needing it. Go figure.

Let's look at Poser. How much Poser related stuff works "out of the box?!' How much of it needs to be run through Mac Convertor?! How much of it will will with Macs?!

Ron, thats almost a non-question, since most of this stuff is made on PCs. But it has little to do with the comparative power and relative stability of the machines. I repeat, people bitch and whine about Win2K and ME and XP and 98 and 97 (which is pretty bewildering an array to begin with) and tolerate MS's monopoly across the board with a series of products that are almost guaranteed to crash on a near-daily basis -- and then these same folk look down their nose on a machine thats far more stable, far easier to use, and -- when put out there for comparison on issues like computing power -- more powerful per mHz. It almost makes sense. Well, whatever. We use what we feel comfortable with. Thats all that matters in the long run.

I've had other computers that were supposed to be technologically superior to the PC. Yeah, they were a great idea, but they never enjoyed the support of "the rest of the world." My question/statement is the most valid part of this whole discussion. Poser is one program I use more than any other. Most of the Poser stuff is geared to PC's!!! So if I have a Mac, I can shout about being technologically advanced, while I have a devil of a time because it doesn't really matter without the proper support, compatability, etc. Macintosh is out of the loop as far as I'm concerned.

And over a billion people have been served at McDonalds.

I prefer Wendy's!

"Yum!" ;=]