Okay, I've got this perfectly nice scene all set up in Poser and the *#^$)%)$( thing refuses to render! We're not even talking the huge, high-res, anti-alias final render, I just want a dumb lil 72ppi no shadows no anti-alias render just to see if the textures look like I think they do - and every time I click the render now button Poser freezes up on me completely and I have to do control/alt/delete to get out. I've got Poser4 and ProPack on a 1.2 Gig processor with 512 mb RAM and this is just a measely old 19 mg pz3 file - what is the problem???? Help!!!! Thanks, extremely frustrated, soon-to-be-hairless sweet

Windows 98 ???? If that's what you have as an OS..that is your problem. Get XP Pro....I use XP Home and no longer have any more problems with rendering...but everyone recommends Pro version...don't know why, the overall program is the same, except for mainly network stuff.

Yes, get XP and give Micro$soft all your personal data to hold in their oh-so-secure hands? ::ptui!:: Back to topic. Windows has a terrible habit of not releasing memory on this temporary stuff, among a few other quirks. Step 1 is to save everything and then restart the computer before rendering it. Step 2 is to check to see if Poser can find all the things it is looking for. Step 3 is to set your display style to current render settings and see if you can spot a difficulty (wrong texture or whatever). Step 4 is is to render using the keyboard shortcut rather than a mouse click. I'm kidding about the step order, but you might try various alternative means of sneaking up on the beast. Carolly

I exactly agree hairless sweety! Burning up? lol On my system P4 was horrible with win98. then in XP home it was no problems at all. All my same hardware too. XP is a TRUE change for the positive all around anyway. TWO months and NOT ONE crash by XP. It is a dream of ease compared to '98. If you get the upgrade however, DO burn all of your personal work onto discs, then uninstall ALL programs. Then and only then do the upgrade. Make sure that all that is on the drive is '98, nothing more. Spend the money! Alex

Right Carolly, but the problem will keep on occuring in '98. It is not worth putting up with time after time, and I kept my '98 disc perfect! Alex

Reboot your comp and see if that clears up the blockage. Sasha :)

Oh whoops....already suggested.

Thanks much, y'all - if nothing else I feel better knowing I'm not the only one this happens to! I've got '98 - I've tried restarting the computer about a bazillion times, made sure nothing else was running that might be using resources and I will try the display style thingy. Now, for two (more) dumb questions - how do I check to see if Poser is finding everything, and what's the keyboard shortcut to render? (I looked in the book and didn't find anything :-P) Sigh, guess I'll have to start saving up pennies for XP, and limp along on 98 workarounds in the meantime.... sweet

Best upgrade I have ever purchased was XP. Win 98 locked Poser up way to many times for me. ME was not much better. Niles

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com/

Just a dumb question: Have you checked to see if you have Poser 4.03? If not, go to Curious Labs and download the 4.03 Upgrade.

Well I had lockups on 98 before, but a reboot solved the problem. I am now on 2K and have NO lockups, so maybe an upgrade would be good. :)

i have the same problem...beautiful scene..and it just sits there..nothing..no loading lights..no nothing...starts twiching...most of the time all i do is restart the puter itself..and normally works...

Well, you see I run all my graphics programs on the Mac... which crashes so seldom that I sit there with a stunned look of disbelief for an extra minute. This Windows box crashes several times a night. :: With the possible security flaws, I wouldn't want anything I valued too much on this beastie anyway. Anyway, on the Mac Propellor-R is the render quickkey; on PCs it is Cont-R. You can find all these quick keys on the Reference card which comes with Poser. Saves the mouse hand. :) Carolly

I'll give that a try, too, Ron - I just looked and I'm still on Poser 4.02, maybe that will help! Thanks!

Thanks, Carolly! sweet frantically searches through box for little card :-) Usually a restart does the trick - it's just being particularly difficult this time - and my patience (not to mention my hair) is wearing thin.... twitch, twitch :-P

Maybe if you wait you can pray this is fixed in Poser 5....but then again, its mainly a memory allocation problem with 98/ME. What I think is a bit weird...I never had problems rendering until I upgraded to 4.03...or maybe it was 98SE.... Anyway, no matter..XP has NEVER not rendered...since February when I installed it....even with huge files of 70meg and more...as many as 8 Victoria characters all textured with UP DO hair, Hollywood hair etc..

defrag? maybe a good defragging and scan disk is in order.... just a thought... Sasha

I have win98 and only 156 meg of ram! all the advice here has been good especially saving the PZ3 scene first in case you need to C/A/D. The little gizmo that I keep recommending is "Cacheman" memory manager from ZDnet or Cnet downloads.
You can boost memory before and during rendering, now even when free ram is at 00 I can still manually tweak it to recover. Last night I rendered a 20meg with 5 figures and a pile of objects and lighting, granted it was slow (15mins) but would have froze solid without cacheman. Another trick I found to relieve the render constipation is open and shut Outlook express (offline) this is a very final resort as either Poser will kickstart or everything freezes. #@pz!+F"
Tommy.

Personally I wouldn't waste money on memory cache programs. I'd invest on more memory instead.

Thanks y'all! I probly could stand to scrub and defrag my memory (in more ways than one, LOL) - I've got a memory cache program, I just keep forgetting to use it - although I do remember to resave the pz3 almost every time I make any sort of change. :-P I'll have to wait to upgrade my RAM until I can get XP - 512 is the max 98 will handle without going totally bonkers. I usually don't have this much trouble, even with renders MUCH bigger than this - guess Poser just doesn't like me this week, maybe I need to sacrifice a naked babe in a temple to it or something....;-)

XP has superb RAM control. You have enough RAM anyway. All you need is XP. But if you upgrade, please remember to follow my above instructions. I went through over 3 1/2 years of '98 hell death and misery, screwed blued and tattood. I became elated at XP. Alex

how big are the textures you're using? the problem I had most with win98 was even with just 1 figure if the texture I used was over 1000X1000 it would throw a fit and nothing would change it until I lowered the size of the texture, try that, it makes your pic look crap but at least you can render. Rob

XP Home should do just fine. If you don't know if you need Professional, then you don't. Look around if you can find a copy of 2000 Professional cheaper, that will do just as well for the memory problems.

If someone knows where I can get a cheap (used is fine) version of Windows 2000, please point me to it. I'm not willing to switch over completely, but I'm thinking of maybe setting up a dual-boot system and using an NT-based OS to render. I don't want to encourage Microsoft by buying XP, though, and every (OK, both) places I've looked, 2000 was still $300. I'm not willing to shell out that much for an experiment that might flop. For Poser 5, I just want a "stop render" button that works all the time, including during that initial calc period where it'll freeze up, rather than only when it's rendering something.

Attached Link: http://www.pricewatch.com/

For FyreSpiryt and dreamsosweet. You must look up at the top of the page and click "software" in yellow. Use a little savvy with this site and the results it gives you, Ebay is good too. Alex

dreamsosweet, I'm a bit fuzzy from a cold. I didn't catch how much memory you had before. I have 512MB of RAM with a lowly Celeron 533Mhz processor. I do just fine. I have to recommend Windows XP Home Edition. You can find some potential problem if you have Windows 2000 Pro. I was a Technical Support Engineer (semi-retired only because my employer went bankrupt!), and fairly proficient with all versions of Windows except Windows 2000. We didn't handle Win2K as a part of our jobs. We had instructions to refer customers to the Windows 2000 Tech Support team, and they charged a significant fee. In the past I had Win2K on my computer, and looked for some help in the newsgroups. The attitude there is "You're a Pro, you should know this stuff." Windows 2000 doesn't have some ease of use that we've found in other versions of Windows, including Windows XP. I didn't find the help I needed, so I jumped on Windows XP and never regretted it. I ran in dual-boot mode when I used the Preview version of XP. I never had a reason to boot back to Windows ME. I bought Windows XP and have been happy ever since.

AND the there are only two reasons to get either pro OS, one is to support two CPUs (good for rendering). The second is to support a MAJOR business LAN. Other than that XP home is the NTOSKERNEL anyway, simply running FAT32 like '98. See? XP home is the perfect answer, which also will support a small LAN anyway. Alex

Attached Link: http://www.computercost.com/mswindows.html

MS Windows 2000 Pro OEM $169.00 at computercost.com MICROSOFT Windows 2000 Professional Upgrade $199.88 at http://www.jandr.com With any "surplus" stuff, make sure you get a legit license & the full version. I check specifically what they mean by oem. Dual-boot should work fine just install 2000 on a clean disk if possible.

HA! check pricewatch!

OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer. OEM software is only supposed to come with a computer purchase. If someone is selling OEM software separately, they are violating Microsoft's license agreement. It may not be pirating, strictly speaking, but is illegal. There have been documented cases where people paid for OEM software, and never received it. You wonder why? I recently read some news about that in Maximum PC, one of my favorite magazines.

A "hardware piece" of something like RAM or a drive also works.

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: "Four-year-olds are cute, but not when it's your software." If I'm not mistaken, I believe that Windows 98 was orignally supposed to be a big "patch" for Windows 95. ME was the big "upgrade" on the 9x side and Win 2000 was the much waited-for "Windows NT 5". And, XP is the first "home edition" to be based on NT. Yes, some companies may put out "upgrades" just to get more money out of people, but in this case, the benefits of XP (or 2000) should outweigh the cost. --John

Attached Link: http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?DepartmentID=782

I suspect that the oem packages may fall into the category of "grayware." As I said, be careful. I moved to 2000 from 98 and have had no problems with it. If you can use 98, you should be able to use 2000. It may not have the pretty face of XP, but then it looks more like 98. Basically, 2000 married the NT kernel with the 98 interface. There are advanced features under the surface like IPSEC security, but you don't have to use them. If price is your primary concern, make your best deal. Attached is a link to some installation faqs for 2000/XP. BTW, assuming Poser 5 is coming out in the next 6 months or so, I doubt that it will support 98 any better. More likely, problems may increase, so better to upgrade your OS now. It would be awfully frustrating to get P5 and then find out you can't run it.

There are more good reasons to go with Windows XP than to go for Windows 2000. They've already been stated. Anyone who tells you to avoid Windows XP based on appearance probably doesn't know how to alter that appearance. This is a Windows XP desktop.

I use XP Home on my system, and Win2000 at work. Quite frankly, I like using XP a lot more. It may be the software on the work system, but the stuff loads slow, startup and shutdown is slow. I've been using PC style systems since 1980s...XP is by far the best OS I've ever used. Install went without a problem...I have not had a crash since February. Everything works....it even picked up my CD writer when installed, and the burning software works better than the stuff I had before...not one coaster. Poser renders...not sure if you guys read the Poser at Yahoo email list, but I've been bitching about no render problems for quite awhile---it renders EVERYTIME with XP.... nuff said :) This is where the overused string...your mileage may vary, comes into play...but I think if you polled XP users the vast majority will be happy using it...most problems are from using old drivers, incorrectly installed drivers/software, incorrectly configured hardware, etc.