I was running out of room of my C drive. When I attempt to render at a large resolution, Poser would error saying "Not enough disk space to render at the defined resolution." In attempt to solve the problem, I purchased an 80 GIG drive and moved Poser to that drive. Unfortunately, Poser does not know this. It runs well, but it still continues to use the C drive to create its temporary files during rendering. How can I tell Poser to use my new drive instead?

Thanks,
HL

hlarledge@hlarledge.com

Uninstall to clean up the registry I guess..

Here's where you may want to go online and verify some things before setting them, unless you have a way to make some quick backups of your sytemfiles and whatnots. Go to the control panel on your computer (assuming you are using w98/98se) and go to the 'systems icon (or applet, whatever the hell ya call it, double click to open it up and go to the 4th tab, titled 'Performance'. At the bottomright of that you will then see a button called 'virtual memory'. Click once to open, and you will see the hard drive that you have set for rendering. BUT!!!! This is the setting for ALL of what windows renders. Called 'virtual memory' it is how windows handles all of its large files, which is why so much confusion exists over 'how much ram to put in my computer for 3d'. You might actually be 100 times better off for your poser work if you use Norton Ghost or something that does exactly what it does, make an image of what is now your C drive and place that on the 80 gig drive and use IT as your new C drive. your old C drive can then be an extra drive for storing completed 3d work files, etc. But, here is the part nobody wants to hear. It doesn't take a lot of time to get this stuff down, but as a 3d artist, know how your system 'caches' files is important so you can tweak your own system to the max. I got fed up with blue screens and trashed hard drives so I went to a couple sites on dealing with settings. I have to go find them now in my favorites, but I cant do it at the moment. In a couple hours I will put the info and the urls up here. It actually becomes a lot of fun once you wrap your head around it.:-)

If you ever want to move an application from one folder andor drive to another folder andor drive check out http://www.funduc.com/app_mover.htm.
I have never tested this program though so I can only go by the website info.

OK, I found two of them, both my favorite ones because I have them listed on my music site and my 3d site (duh!). Could have spent hours going through my "favorites" on my pc. http://www.bluelifeaudio.com/~pcconfig/ Now, this is mostly a musician's type site for those of us that use our pc to make digital music, but the optimizations will definitely have an amazing effect on your 3d work as well. The other is Tweakhome PC. http://www.tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/ It was my real fav, but it is offline for now, hope it's only temporary. I'ld keep checking that one for awhile. I will post some of the tweaks I've used that I save in case I crashed and burned, and needed to re-tweak. These are notes copied from the TweakPC site. I will put my caveat here though, even though I believe they will work just fine, and that you won't kill your machine permanently by doing these changes, I am not financially responsible for a bad outcome for your computer. Now, onwards... Virtual Memory - Stop Hard Disk trashing Windows 95/98 uses VM (on the slow Hard Disk) dynamically when usable RAM (much faster) is in short supply. Without VM we would, at times, need buckets of RAM when running some programs concurrently. However we need to optimize its use. Help to stop HD trashing by manually setting the size of a static VM Right-click My Computer and then select: Properties Performance Virtual memory Check on Let me specify my own Virtual Memory settings (if possible select a small and fast partition other than the Windows drive) Set both the Maximum & Minimum to about 3 or 2 times the size of your RAM. You can use very little if you have oodles of RAM, and more if short of RAM. Remember: This quantity of Hard Dsik space is now permanenlty allocated to VM (unless you change it again) and wil not be used for normal file storage on the Hard Disk. Remember: The norm is 2 to 3 times the memory size. However, in reality, you can best set it according your own RAM quantity. Setting VM to OFF (or none) can lead to occassional problems as some items, like Screen Savers, automatically use VM. minfilecache=32768 (or do not set it) maxfilecache=98304 All Users: chunksize=2048 namecache=4096 directorycache=96 Caution: With more than 128MB RAM, you should limit MaxFileCache to 70% of total installed physical RAM, and MaxFileCache should not exceed 512MB (524288). The line ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 (limits paging) helps if RAM >128MB EXAMPLE ONLY - Manually tuning VCache Manually changing VCache is quite straightforward - just check your typing! Backup the file system.ini first (its in the Windows directory) Open System.ini in Notepad [Select Start Run. Type in SYSEDIT (MSCONFIG for Win ME), and click OK. [or try clicking HERE] Scroll down to the [VCache] section of System.ini Enter in, or Edit, these lines in the [VCache] section (numbers are in KBs) Save the file. A reboot is necessary for the changes to take effect. [VCache] minfilecache=8192 (or do not set it at all) maxfilecache=16384 Chunksize=2048 NameCache=4096 DirectoryCache=96 Initially, you can concentrate on the MaxFileCache (and MinFileCache), leaving the other settings for fine-tuning later. Also, when tweaking VCache, you should not try other types of computer tweaks until you have established your best settings for VCache! Focus on one major tweak at a time. Note: Do not enter KB (for KiloBytes) after the numbers (and remember 1MB = 1024). Increase Page Buffers Increasing these 4K buffers can result in substantial gains in hard disk access times. The buffers store frequently repeated data in RAM (faster) so the hard disk (slower) is accessed less frequently. Users report a 5-30% improvement. Use only in conjunction with a permanent Swapfile and 32-bit disk access. This affects all I/O (Input/Output) DMA operations e.g. hard disk buffered reads and writes, sound card FM/wavetable MIDI playback and recording, Use Notepad to view system.ini (or click HERE but backup first). locate the [386Enh] section, and change (or edit in) PageBuffers=32 You can use values of 4, 8, 16, 32. The default is 4 which represents 4 x 4KB Backup system.ini first Now, this last bit here was what I had been looking forward to, but I should have known they were having problems because for weeks I kept trying to get the free tweakware offered at the end of this snippet, and the link stayed dead. Hope this helps, and feel free to email me if you have any questions. Adam Smith, aka Taliahad. [Soon] General BIOS Settings: These are too extensive to deal with on this page. Read Advanced RAM timings in BIOS: Your main memory has a range of operational speeds which is set in the BIOS. Computer suppliers often set the main memory timings on the conservative side as a precaution against occasional errors. Faster RAM will always produce a faster system. Most Home users would gladly risk a slight rise in occasional errors in exchange for a better system. Advanced users can access the BIOS to decrease the Wait setting, and others. A very minor alteration has a large effect. The gain is sometimes very substantial. The friendly shareware utility TweakBIOS is convenient to use, and works with a large variety of BIOS types. TweakBIOS Freeware, 134KB, Zip