I also have Win 98SE and Bryce 4.1, and maybe this is something that I have grossly overlooked...but I have never seen a "background task" function. Do you mean you just minimize it, or you JUST open window explorer over it, something like that? (just wondering) Either way, any other activity you do on your pc while you are rendering will have some kind of an effect on the rendering time, no matter how fast the cpu, how much ram, or on what OS. But, perhaps Windows 2000 is better at multi-task than 98, I'm not sure myself (probably is). But, I can make one suggestion, if you are going to do anything else while rendering, use the "render to disk" function. This way your video card only has to worry about windows explorer vs. constantly updating the Bryce window AND...windows explorer. By the way, I believe the only keyboard button that will stop your rendering is the Esc key. Maybe, if you can, try jockeying the keyboard on top of your monitor to prevent any accidental key smashing. (Wow...can I droll on without actually answering the original question, or what?) Agent Smith

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