Is this normal, or is something wrong with my installation: Too frequently when I hit the render button, that little box appears on the screen, but instead of telling me that it's working out lights, shadows, etc., it just sits there. Poser appears to have frozen. I suspect it's usually because I've overloaded the memory - three millennium figures are usually enough to cause the freeze. (I have a 512meg, 1.6gHz machine). So, first, do you think it's a memory issue? Second, is it normal for Poser to just stop? Should I be getting some sort of 'out of memory' message? I've used a little utility that shows me that during the 'freeze', my CPU is working at max capacity, which suggests that Poser is still working, but I've sometimes left the machine on overnight to find no progress in the morning - and sometimes after a reboot the same pic will render without problems in a few minutes. Any ideas what's going on? John

Yeah, Millennium people are pretty hard on the ol' processor. Especially in Poser, because of the morphs and all. Export them to Bryce or something and you can get away with a lot more, because it's just the mesh and no morphs. The versatility is great, but you definitely pay a price for it.

One good way to avoid this is to close poser and reopen it after a "big" scene render. It helps empty the memory blockage so you can render again.

Dear John, try to keep the window as small as possible and keep the antialias off. Other then that it sounds as if you need more resources to run the program. You may want to consider upgrading. Poser does take quite a bit of resources. Also, you may want to be sure that no other programs are running while you are using Poser.

Good luck

Peace
Sashly

... give it a nice warm cardigan and a pair of woolly gloves. A cup of hot soup might help too.... Helpful, aren't I? :o] :] FishNose

What version of Windows are you using? I had this problem until I upgraded to Windows XP. Peggy

what version of poser are you using? if you're not on 4.03 then you're more likely to get freezing as well. Rob

How many applications are running at the same time? My computer is less powerful than yours, and I don't have that problem. Your operating system makes a big difference too. Poser doesn't really seem to like Windows ME at all... It was always misbehaving and throwing fits, crashing and freezing. But Poser behaves with Windows XP Home Edition for me.

Thanks for all the answers, guys. I'm using Poser 4.03 It might be the operating system. I'm on ME. I didn't think it was just a PC-power issue, because I'm pretty sure that some people with lower-powered machines can get more figures into their pics. It's off-topic, and a totally different issue, but I won't be buying XP in any shape or form. I'd switch to a mac before I'd do that. So I'll just have to put up with the ME glitch in the meantime. Thanks, everyone. john

john if you don't want XP try to get hold of win2k it's almost the same as XP but without all the spying stuff that XP has built in. ME is never going to do poser any justice, it's a major problem with the memory management in ME that's causing poser to freeze. Rob

OK, I'm going to jump into the XP issue very briefly. 1.) XP is the best operating system I've found. It works great with Poser. 2.) This spying stuff is so over-rated, and is entirely inaccurate. 3.) True, I don't like the fact that MS won't let me install Windows XP on my wife's computer. They won't give me a real break on the price. Cheap bastards. 4.) My wife doesn't care. She doesn't use Poser, and Windows ME works fine for her. 5.) I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 2000 Pro is very hard to find. MS has made a new operating system, and it's time to move on. Ron

I didn't actually want XP when I got it cause of all the nightmare stories I heard, but barring 1 or 2 minor hiccups (me playing with things I shouldn't) it's definitely the best MS system I've used, I've not tried win2k pro, a friend recently bought a new pc with WinME & sorry but it was a total lemon, you look at it crossed eyed and it crashed, needless to say it went back and was replaced with an XP system. plus the spying stuff is really easy to switch off. Rob

I have both Windows 2000 and 98 on the same machine, 98 does that all the time in Poser, especially when you are rendering something that you have made a bunch of changes to and you haven't yet saved! ;-) Win 2000 doesn't do that, I have 768 Mb of RAM, incidently. I'd gather XP would work just as well, but I'd rather have 2000, myself. Less junk to turn off, if nothing else. XP is the operating system of the moment, of course. If you have seperate disk partitions a dual boot system is nice too, so you have something to fall back on, you can get utilities to partition your current drive on the fly and then just add 2000 (or (I think) XP) retaining your old as a backup. You than get a little menu on startup asking which one you want to boot from. You can even run the same installation of Poser on both - I do that. Eventually Microsoft would like us to replace our operating system yearly, as they could use the money. Curse you, Bill Gates!

I got to do the Windows XP "beta program." I setup for a dual boot just because that version of Windows XP would eventually expire. I never once had a reason to boot back to Windows ME. When I bought Windows XP, I wiped the hard drives and installed from scratch. I love Windows XP.

Ah, but a backup is a wonderful thing Ron, always have something to fall back on. At least then when you see "the blue screen of death" you have some way of getting to your files. Top 5 Windows Error Messages converted to Haiku Poetry: 5. Windows crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams. 4. Impermanence. A crash reduces this expensive computer to a simple stone. 3. You step in the stream, but the water has moved on. What you seek is not here. 2. Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank. 1. Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.

lol Jim those haiku are brilliant here's my attempt at one windows XP. Windows NT. More money for Bill. Rob

Sheesh, I didn't mean to start an XP war! My comment was just based on my purely subjective decision that I'm d@mned if I'm going to go cap in hand to Microsoft every time I want to reinstall from scratch (or have a major upgrade). I loathe piracy, but this 'product activation' thing stinks. I wonder how long XP activation will be supported once MS decide they want us all to use their next operating system? But this is turning into an anti-MS rant, and is WAY off topic. Sorry. John

hehehe I'm not anti MS they are partly to thank for poser, they provide 1 of the OS to run poser, I had my first taste of product activation when I had to reinstall everything and it was surprisingly painless, 1 quick phone call and everything was up and running again. Rob

I recently reinstalled Windows XP at least 12 times in one week. I never had to call Microsoft for activation. I have a cable modem, and XP probably asked if it was ok to activate.. it surely wasn't an event worth remembering.

mine tried but couldn't connect to their website so I had to do it manually but it was nothing to worry over, lovely girls voice at the other end talks you through each step and it was a free call as well. Rob