Does anyone know what Poser is trying to tell me by ringing the bell on my computer repeatedly while it's rendering. Does this mean I've run out of resources? The image still renders. Although I do seem to be having a problem getting my ground shadows to show up (This may just be too much light from other sources though and have nothing to do with the bell ringing). Just in case its relevent, I'm running Poser 4 under Win2K and I have 512 meg of memory.

It sound like you've got a ringing bell sound assigned to a Windows "end-of-event" or "program-close" event in the Control-panel->sounds control. During renders, Poser does a number of sub-routines, which windows CAN interpret as separate programs or sub-routines starting & stopping (each an event to be announced by whatever sound is assigned). It's different in different versions of Windows. I get a single one when I render, just before the render itself starts creeping up the screen. Try poking around in control Panel->sounds to see if you can find what events have that sound assigned. then you can either re-assign a new sound to that event, or no sound at all. This pic is what it looks like in XP. That's my best guess from your description - Good Luck!

When rendering in Poser let it finish before touching anything else in the interface. A bell will sound if you do and sometimes the render can be damaged.

The only thing I can see in the sound panel that is set to the bing.wav is "default". Also this happens with out me touching anything. I didn't notice when it started with this scene I'm working on because I offten work with the sound off but this is the biggest scene I've ever rendered in Poser.

Sometimes the best we can do is a wild guess. If this only happened with the biggest scene you've rendered, that may be your clue. How much memory do you have? Have you defragged your hard drive lately? How much free hard drive space do you have? Maybe we'll figure this out yet! Ron

On the drive that Poser resides on I have over 4 gig free, my memory is 1/2 gig, fragmentation on that drive is low, and the scene seems to be rendering okay. I'm still working on the scene and it's probably going to get bigger but if I'm running out of resources I will need to rethink this. Thanks, Thorgrim

I hate to say it but 4GB is not much space these days. I forget if Windows actually deducts the swap file space before it reports the free space?! Let's take a wild guess and figure Windows actually needs part or most of the 4GB free for swap file space. You're actually out of room?! You report low fragmentation. I never trust "statistics." I defrag the hard drive at least once a week, maybe 2-3 times a week is better. Run scandisk too and see if it reports and troubles. Do you have one hard drive that is partitioned? If so, how large is the hard drive? I have a 20GB hard drive that has Windows XP and all my software except Poser. My 30GB hard drive is reserved for the Poser installation, Poser downloads and my artwork. Poser works a lot better with this arrangement. Of course sometimes I need to reorganize my stuff, backup to CD and delete it to make more room. I'm down to about 6GB left now, and will clean up stuff very soon. Ron

I had this annoying problem too, and as far as I can tell it only happens when running Poser under Win2K. I also had problems rendering from Poser with some codecs, such as Indeo.

In the end I went back to using Win98SE and the problems disappeared. I could have lived with the ringing, (just turn off my speakers!), but I had MAJOR problems with my motherboard and Win2K, so Win98 it was.

As far as I remember it doesn't affect the final animation, just causes a little "ringing in the ears". ;-)

Dave

I had Windows 2K for a time, and never had that problem. I did get this message a lot, and it was false: (it went something like this:) There is insufficient disk space to render at this resolution. The message was not consistent. I'd get it sometimes with one render, but not other times. There didn't seem to be an easy, dependable solution. In the end I yanked Windows 2K and installed Windows XP. I got that insufficient disk space message ONCE with Windows XP. I merely defragged the hard drive, and didn't see the error again.

I got the Insufficient disk space at times until I got more RAM in Win 2K. I think it had to do with the swap file or something on large renders.

Okay, I'll try defraging my drive and adding more space to it from one of my other partitions. Does anyone know how Win2K works with swap files. In Win95/98 I would point the swap file to my temp drive or partition. Can I still do that, should I still do that? Thanks, Thorgrim

I run win2k. You can set swap files (page files as win2k calls them) to the size you want, based on the amount of resourses available and also locate them in different drives and partitions if that is an option. I have found that Poser expects to find a swap (page) file in the same drive/partition that Poser is running from. IE: I have Poser installed in partition P: on my desktop. In order to not get the insufficent disk space error, I had to set up an additional page file for partion P: Only 100mb is all it took. (you can of course size it higher if you have the space) I already had a 3 gb page file set up along with 1 gb ram. Poser was not happy until I added the addition page file for P:

Shadownet, How do you get to partition P?! Do you have all those partitions on one hard drive? More than one hard drive?! I used to try dividing my hard drives into several partitions, but it went against me. I'd run out of room in one partition and not another. So I just usually have one partition per hard drive. I have a 20GB C drive, and 30GB D drive.

I like having different partitions for different stuff. IE: D: is download stuff I: is Internet P: is Poser. I set up partitions when I install the OS. You can give the partitions any drive letter available so I do not have to have a O: to have a P: I have 5 partitions set up on my drive. I recommend a minimum of 2. IMHO you should always put your OS in its own (almost always C:) partition. Install everthing else onto another partition . That way if you ever have to reinstall the OS - which I like to do fairly often. You can wipe that partition and reinstall it without messing up your other stuff. You will, of course, have to re-install any programs back into the reg - just install into existing folder. You are back up and running in no time. Oh, I also prefer to have a partition for just the swap/page file. S: In Win2k you can use the disk management feature and install/remove partitions at anytime - just be really careful of what you are doing so as not over write an area with data. To be extra safe do a full backup first or if you have two drives, move stuff onto it until you get the partitions set up like you want.

I can't agree enougth that the OS should be in it's own partition. It makes reinstalling the the OS much easier. I also like to partition my drives as to purpose... SYSTEM, APPLICATION, GAMES, DATA, STORAGE, DOWNLOAD, PICTURES, ANIMATION, BACKUP, TEMP. I use partition magic to resize the partitions as needed. I've currently got two drives a 60 gig and a 40 gig which are really in need of a good cleanup in some of the partitions. Having them seperate helps with backups and fragmentation. I don't worry about fragmentation so much on my download and storage type partitions and I know as long as I keep my data partition backed up I'm not going to lose my work. My data partition is on one drive and by backup partition is on the other. If one drive goes down I still have my data on the other. Of course if both drives get fried, OUCH! I have to back to CDRW backups which I don't do to often.

My poser dings every time I reset a dial by typing. Now that's annoying. (sigh) But I need to leave that wav in windows so I can hear when download is done. Remember computers are absolutely logical and precise. Except when they aren't. Lyrra

I defragged the drive and and moved my swap file to a drive with a lot more space but quasemoto is still very much active in Poser. Just for an experiment I added some more things to the scene and it started dinging even before it had mapped all the shadows for the lights. When it got to the actual rendering the bell was going off faster than my sound card could keep up with. Yet the render seemed to complete with out any abnormalities visible in the picture. The scene I'm working with would not even load in win98 with the same amount of memory. I used to have both OSs on my machine but removed Win98 when I found that I could nolonger load large scenes I created under Win2K in Win98.

Hey, I sympathize with your problems, and would like to help. But it seems we're just not getting sufficient information up front. Believe me, I am a darned good Technical Support Engineer, and have a great instinct for problems and resolution. But I wouldn't even begin to offer solutions or suggestions without all the facts. Your most recent post indicates the great difficulty here. You still have not divulged all the relevant information that would help us help you. Something about going back and forth between Windows 2000 and Windows 98 is very relevant. It's also relevant to note if you had problems loading the file in one operating system or the other. I've had my say, and I'm saying this because I (and others)want to help. But I don't feel we have the proper information or tools yet to do the job. Ron

Heya, you are running win2k right? and you did remember to put an additional 100 mb page file on the same drive/partition that Poser is installed? Reason I ask, is I use to have this exact same prob - the bell dinging as I rendered - it was a low resource prob. I fixed it when I added the pagefile to the same drive/partition where Poser is installed. Poser handles page/swap files in a strange way I guess. Also, are you running rambooster? I recommend that you use it or a similar ram management prog. Poser has a memory leak prob.

Sorry Ron, I'll try to put what I hope is the relavant information in point form, I'm sometimes not very good at making my self clear. (I really appreciate the help) OS: Win2k - Service pack 2 installed - also the Win2k games support upate. Memory: 512 meg Processor: Intel 850 Drives: 60 meg & 40 meg Graphic: Nvidia Geforce II 64 meg Computer make: Dell Dimension 4100 Swap/Page files: 100 meg - 3000 meg on partition containing Poser (First harddrive) 3000 meg - 4500 meg on temp partition (on second drive) Poser version 4.03 Notes: I used to have both win98 and win2k installed, I was testing win2k. I found and I could handle much bigger scenes in poser with win2k. So,I reinstalled my system a few months ago with win2k only. I have never had the problem in win98, I would get an insuffucent memory error if I tried to load a scene this size in Win98 or it would lockup during rendering. I checked the size of Page files using the Wimdows explorer while I was rendering and they did not seem to icrease in size as far as I could tell. Thorgrim

I'm sorry I came off a bit harsh. I slip into that sometimes. I hate to tell you, but my answer to Windows 2000 was to wipe the hard drive and install Windows XP. Of course Windows 2000 "is a professionals operating system," and the people at the Windows 2000 newsgroups didn't like answering what they felt were "basic questions with answers that you should already know." I never really liked Windows 2000, but had it on my computer because they had it at work. I've had much better luck with Windows XP Home Edition. I understand it, and it understands me. I'm wondering if you might have some other problem that isn't immediately evident?! I'm just a bit too lazy to reread all those messages. Did you check on your video card drivers? Are they the most current? How much hard drive space is free?! I hope someone else with more knowledge can step in here. Ron

Well, at least as far as I can tell, the scene still renders correctly with out errors. I rendered the scene as a very large image last night 4090x3814 pixels. It took a little while but it rendered. The gaps between the bells were much longer and they started at the same relative place in the rendering process as my other renders of this scene. So, I guess, I'm a go until I find it starts to crap out. Thanks for the help, Thorgrim

On the space/memory issue, I only have 192MB of RAM and 77MB free on my Poser drive (which is C:), running Win2K Pro SP2. I loaded Vicky, a high res texture and dressed her in the Alice bra and panties then rendered at 1024x768 all render options checked. I also opened the sound applet to check that sound was on and checked my drive space while rendering. No bells, no problems. Oh, I haven't defragged in probably close to a year (not enough free space to do it).

Now this is hardly an optimum setup by any means, but my point is that drive space and RAM by themselves do not automatically mean the stuff won't work or that it will screw up. Believe it or not, if you have enough RAM to run the OS, the memory management it the NT/2K kernel can usually work with what you have.

Your ringing could be a lot of non-obvious things. #1, Check with CL tech support, then get the latest Windows service pack, check for driver updates for the video, sound and motherboard, turn off any resident programs one by one and see if that solves it. If none of that works try reinstalling Poser and the update, then Windows if you're desperate. Last resort, just hit mute before you render.

Ouch, 77MB left on a hard drive? Only 192MB of RAM?! These days anything less than 100MB is "iffy," and that is only if you're not doing games or graphics. Memory and hard drive space are cheap right now. Go out and buy more memory and a larger hard drive. I bet your computer will love you, and it will stop beeping.

I'm sure you're right about that Ron. I do have space on other drive. Just a matter of getting the resolve to move/re-install apps. As for the memory, everything works fine with the 192 and given that (and current financial circumstances), I have other priorities. I really am sold on Win2K's reliability though. Given that most of the kernel in XP is the same, it'll be a while before I upgrade. Wanna buy a never installed copy of WinME?

I'm not sure of the current price of memory. The last time I bought 256MB of SDRAM, I got it for about $20 from www.crucial.com, and they delivered it to my door the next day for free shipping. It's possible RAM prices are even lower now.

Yes, I always use Crucial. No, it ain't gone down. Currently sitting at $83.69 for 256MB of PC133 CL2. I've tried cheaper generic brands but they are usually CL3. My BIOS recommends the CL2 (aka CAS2) which is a bit faster. Currently, Crucial's price is the same for both.

Also, I don't want to invest any more money in PC133, when the next CPU I get will probably use DDR PC2100 - unless that's obsolete by then as well :-)