thanks you two. I think i'll try a fresh install tonight or tomorrow. BTW, my virtual memory is set as it is, cause i was told to do it... Poser never rendered anything in 1600x1600 for me until i had it that way. It did use to be 512 min and max. As thats what is supposedly best for gaming if you have 256meg ram. Also, i do always restart my machine after the render crash.. if Poser crashes on start up, i just close it down and restart it. normally works fine second time. Until i get to rendering. Also, sometimes yes, it will render... for example while working today, after waiting 45 minutes, i had it render me a picture, with 4 people in it. all high quality textures. Background and props. Used to be able to get it to do that in about 4 minutes. Oh well, anyway, yeah.. i'll try a fresh install... of the whole thing (poser, pro pack and service pack 3) hopefully that'll sort it out. Thanks again, duckie