In an earlier thread, OPERAGUY reported that he queried CuriousLabs about RAM utilization, and he kindly posted the reply he received (full text of his EM reproduced below). CL's response seemed to imply that Poser4 could utilize more RAM, even gigabytes, by using "a memory updater". I've been experiencing many system crashes on my animation renders (admittedly large scenes with 2-3 millenium figures, extensive props, etc) despite 768 MB installed RAM and a manually set Windows XP virtual memory setting of min and max both at 3840 MB. On my other, Win98 machine, I can't even render a single millenium figure despite 384 MB installed RAM and 1152 MB min and max virtual memory settings. So my question is: Does anyone know what a memory updater is, and where to get one? (I have RAMBOOST, if that's what they meant, but that doesn't seem to help). But at least it sounds like CL plans to address the RAM usage constraint issues in P5... yeah! Thanks anticipatorily to all for replies, and to OPERAGUY for initiating his thread. (OG-- Hope you don't mind I re-initiated thread here since your thread transformed into a MAC vs PC debate). Cheers, TGuy [Start of OPERAGUY's message] This is probably known to many, but I am glad to have official word on Poser5 hardware implementation. This past week I wrote to CuriousLabs asking: 1) WIll Poser 5 have important optimzation for dual processing? 2) WIll Poser 5 utilize additional RAM in a significant way? Response came next day: Hello there, there is no release date for Poser 5 yet, but the underlying features are the same for Poser 4 and 5; They are not multi-threaded. so dual processors will not increase performance; previews are not hardware accelerated, so hi-end video cards are not needed, Poser 4 needs to have a memory updater applied to work with several gigs of memory; Poser 5 will have the updated code to handle gigs of memory. Right now, RAM and processor speed are the biggest performance dependencies. -- Thank you for your interest in our products. Sincerely, Al Willbrand Technical Support Manager Curious Labs [end of OPERAGUY's message]

I think the "memory updater" in this case would be in the form of a code patch for Poser4... not a stand-alone app. I think CL are talking more theoretically on the subject of the memory updater. Note that nothing can help WIN98/ME with respect to memory as the 256M limit will always apply on these OSs. (It's a feature, not a bug!!) H:)

Forgive my ignorance, but I'm on Win 98 - what's the 256Mb limit?

I have 512MB in my ME machine and it seems to work better/faster than it did with 256Mb. For what it's worth.

Attached Link: http://avatars.curiouslabs.com/al/ProPackMemUpdate.zip

Dang, sorry for the double post... I should add that the reason I needed the memory updater was that Poser encounters problems when your virtual memory (pagefile) setting are too high. they told me Poser starts to have memory problems when you have more than 2 Gigs of virtual memory. How odd. P.

did they say it was ok to let others have that link? I mean they haven't officially announced that it exists have they? Rob

Also, does that "memory updater" pertain to Non-Propack Poser 4??

Well, I'm about to find out. Worst thing that can happen is my system crashes :P

good luck shadowcat

They didn't say not to mention it. I wrote to the tech support address and I got this link in reply. I was told it was a "common known issue" wih Poser. It seemed like a stock response... personally typed but not specific to my case or computer specs. The phrasing led me to believe this is a fix for peole with high virtual memory allocations, which Poser does not agree with. In my case, Poser was not able to display 3D objects at all. I could only get a grey outline when I hoveered the mouse over the object, and trying to render crashed Poser without an error. As it turns out it was due to a 512 Mb memory upgrade I installed last week. Again, odd. Hope I haven't committed some evil releasing the link, but I don't assume things sent to me by techies are in confidence. Phoenix

I doubt you've done anything wrong, they'll probably look on it as saving them some time having to do it themselves. Rob

2Gb is what you can address using 31-bit addressing - maybe that's the reason. I'd still like to know what the 256Mb limit in Win '98 is - anyone, please ?

What 256mb limit in Win98SE, thip? Tell you what - head to hardware forum, and search for either Windows memory limits, or posts by DoctorBeg. Doc gave a pretty in depth outline of what the upper ram limits and ram handling in Win98/WinME are, with links to various tech sites and articles.

***Well, I'm about to find out. Worst thing that can happen is my system crashes *** It works fine in Poser 4, but you have to rename the file. The one being installed is a pro pack dll, and it has a version of 13, Poser 4 with CL update uses version 12. Simply change the dll from 13 to 12 and it works ok. I can't see any glaring problems in poser and it appears to run normally - though it does appear to load a tad slower.

there is a limit to the amount of physical ram that win98/ME can handle, there's also limits to the amount of ram a motherboard can handle, but the only limit to virtual memory is the size of your harddrive. don't ask me what the limits are cause I don't remember & since getting winXP I don't care either ;) Rob

but the only limit to virtual memory is the size of your harddrive. No. The size of the address pointer sets the limit of virtual memory, which usually is 4GB in 32bit operating systems.

oops :) ok I was wrong, I'd dig out the manual but at 20pages it's probably not got anything about this in it. Anyone else noticed how each new version the manual gets smaller & smaller? I've still got the old win3.1 manual somewhere great big huge thing it is, winxp manual 11 pages. Rob

It's so you know how much easier to use it is - I think iMacs come with 1 page (of course the shorter the manual the bigger the html/pdf file, and the more ... for Dummies you have to buy, but you're caught by then).

try telling that to the people I used to work with, we changed from win3.1 to WinNT & a year later there were still people who couldn't use it properly & that was after a days training course & with the full support of yours truly & his 5 years of experience, they didn't change to NT till 2000, talk about slow. Rob

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

thanks for the link Crypto I just ran the tests and I only got 1 yellow flag, which was for a setting I messed up the other day.

My Poser PC has Win98 First Edition, an 800MHz processor, and 128MB of RAM. I have no trouble with Michael, and recently did a render featuring Vicky and Posette (fully clothed), George Deep's mummy, a complete dungeon environment, and some additional items for set dressing. On the other hand, my last render was of Vicky in the new trenchcoat, with Infernal's castle props, and it refused to render until I reduced the size of the coat's texture/bump maps.

Blimey... they kept this quiet! Although it sounds like you have to get the square peg into the round hole to get the updater working with P4... thanks for the research, Questor. The problems I had rendering under Win98 led me to buying XP Pro. Oh well... H:)

PC Pitstop comes in handy when you think you've tried everything to fix a problem. It's also a REALLY nice way to test your firewall. Keep it up, and see how many errors Pitstop throws. If there are holes, it'll find it. Oh man, yeah, Dragon. The trenchcoats are major resource hogs. I swear that thing takes more RAM to use than a fully clothed Vicky and Mike together. I don't even want to think about trying to do both of them in the trenches, my computer would just roll over and die. Yes, Win98 chokes on higher RAM levels, but I did notice a HUGE difference in switching from 256 to 384.

Does this work for P4 on Win 2kPro SP2?
I have an AMD XP 2000 chip with 1.5 gigs of EEC Registered Ram (going to 2.5 gigs soon). When I first installed Poser 4.03 I had horrible problems similar to Anton.
I eventually realised these were mainly to do with the ammount of paged memory and which drives I allocated for it. But perhaps there was more to it than that? Can anyone advise?

Thanks
STORM

Poser works like crap on my p5-90 with 16 megs of ram. I can't even put the icon on my desktop in my Windows 3.1 beta. And I can forget about using my 286 with EMS memory board and 16 color TTL EGA monitor.

I also use more than 256RAM in my 98 box, and have noticed a good diff from 256 and it as stable as a rock. I've been told that the win98se ram choking starts happening when you have more than 512 MB as the sum total of the ram and [something else - maybe swap file] runs out of naming/address space or something. Was also told that between 256 and 512, win98se still uses the RAM but perhaps not as efficiently as it could. There, my 2c.

Storm... I'm not Anton, if that's what you meant. Phoenix is my given name. (I always worry posting here that I'll be mistaken for Anton... someone who actually knows what he is talking about.) :) The memory updater, from what I could tell, only replaces a single DLL in the Poser directory, no system files, so it's not operaing system dependent. I can't see a reason it wouldn't work on Win 2KPro. Anyway, glad to hear that it works with Poser4. For all I know they have a separate installer for P4 so that you wouldn't have to rename the file. Phoenix

My low powered Win 98 machine with 156 meg ram will cope with up to 4 millenium figures in a scene and I've never ever experienced the dreaded cross talk. There used to be some dilemmas running out of grunt during renders but Cacheman memory manager seemed to solve that. Here's the clincher though.... if I recover the memory up high (100 + megs) Poser will not even think about rendering, in plain english the lower the memory (zero or less) the quicker the rendering starts, all I can conclude is that it is using swap file which is set for auto management. I'm sticking to the facts here in the hope that I've said something useful, but yes! do have my share of other problems such as freezing when an object file cant be located. If this happens search for the obj file delete it and reinstall the prop or character, dont try just re-installing over the top as it does not work. Wouldn't it be nice if someone could design a cure-all patch to eliminate all of Posers bugs, sure they'd make a fortune here. Tommy.

Oooops sorry phoenixamon, reading the stuff too quickly ;0) STORM

Thomasrjm wrote: do have my share of other problems such as freezing when an object file cant be located. If this happens search for the obj file delete it and reinstall the prop or character, dont try just re-installing over the top as it does not work. If the OBJ is where it is supposed to be, you only need to delete the RSR. They get messed up pretty easily, and that is what Poser looks for. If it finds no RSR it just builds a new one. Most items don't come with the geometries RSR, which is why reinstalling over the old one won't work. It's only replacing the OBJ which is probably okay. John

Thanks John, that makes better sense! I have just deleted all the files except texture then re-installed the char or prop, obvously the problem was only a corrupt rsr. Tommy.

I have the exact same problem with PPP on my new system (a P4 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM), and I never had it on my old one (PIII with 516 RAM). So far my communications with CL have not lead to the tip to DL the memory updater, and when I tried the link ofr it nothing came up. Help, CL!

CL sent me the link to the updater. Haven't tried it yet, but here's hoping.

thomasrjm:
Are you saying to manually set virtual memory to less than 100megs, or to rely on auto memory management? I still have trouble with Las Vegas hair and Jim Burton recommneded setting VM to over 512megs, which seems to be the opposite of what you're saying (if I'm understanding you of which there is no guarantee ;-) )
Thanks,

To Nukeboy :- I only have 156meg of ram !!! ,and my swap file limits are not set, this is the default (Let windows manage swap file) However I followed the DAZ tech tip and installed "Cacheman" using 'recover memory' every 10 minutes. Memory can also be recovered manually in a crunch by right clicking the toolbar. The part baffling me is that big renders wont start with a high memory figure? (over 100 meg) and when this happens I lower the figure by opening and closing Outlook and Coreldraw to suck the ram down, technically I would think the more ram the better, but this machine seems very happy to render on an empty tank. The computer lease runs out early next year and I'm already planning its replacement with a 17" monitor priority on top of the wish, list and yes! screw up your faces! I will buy another Hewlett Packard as this baby has never missed a beat in 4 years, just become out-dated. Tommy.