How come, my computer has no problem rendering Emily, a Taruru character and a Mike2P4 character, all dressed up in fancy clothes with hi-rex textures... + Awful Souls chained Wall prop. No problem at all.. renders in 5 minutes. But, if i havea blank scene, with Stephanie dressed in a few clothes... blam, computer wont do anything. I just have the progress bar there and nothing moves. Occasionally, it will render, afte about 15 reboots and trying various ways.. i will eventually get one render of her..then i notice that skin i showing through and her hair is misplaced.. try and re-render after the corrections and it stops again. I'vehad this before, and my solution was always to import into bryce.. but heres the thing. In Bryce, i can import that 3 character + wall prop scene no problem... but Stephanie and clothes produces an "out of memory" problem.. what the hell going on there? Anyone got any clues? BTW: i'm using windows 98SE... got 15 gig spare room, 256meg ra with the virtual memory set at 512... 900mhz processor. Now using Pro Pack with the service pack 3 installed. I've tried it without pro pack, with pro pack, and without the service pack... and of course now with it. But no joy. anyone got any suggestions... PLEEEEEEEEEASE. Thanks in advance, take care. Duck.

Which textures are you using for each character (Emily, Mike, and Steph)? I've seen people complain before about DAZ's hi-res textures for the Mill. family, from being resource hungry to freezing renders. I've had no problems with them, but I also have a lot of RAM. A few more specifics might help us help you. :)

I am using Windows 2k but I did have some problems while running Zone Alarm and Norten Anti-virus. The problems may not have been related to those programs but deleting did make the problem go away. I believe that Win98SE was not as good at memory handling as 2k is. Have you looked to see if 98 has any other service releases that you may have missed? I have also had a freeze occur when my newgroup browser exceeded specified size. But I am not sure that that is an issue with 98SE. Poser and newsbrowsers can both be very resource intensive at times and seem to really take a bite on system.

Hi...Ran into this myself with the newer models and high res textures and fought it tooth and nail. Similar system specs, too...(750 p3, 512 megs)I found the easiest fix was to upgrade to Win ME , as it manages memory better (so I was told). It worked well from then on..If you can find a copy of ME on the cheap, it's worth it. 2K may be more trouble than it's worth in terms of compatibilty with your 98 programs. Give that a shot... BT

FWIW, I think most of the compatibility issues with 2k have been resolved, unless they're old dos-based programs. I've been running 2k for a couple years now and everything runs fine, except for my old, old games (talking late 80s and early 90s here). :) An OS change would probably do the trick, but as is, those hi-res textures alone take up more than 256 megs of ram. Again, it would probably help, just because everything pre-2k is atrocious at memory management, but I'd consider resizing the textures first (provided that is the problem) since a change of OS may not be possible, and it can be a big undertaking backing everything up if you don't have a spare harddrive to dump everything on to (ALWAYS install a Micros~1 OS clean, never upgrade). And since the discussion has kind of turned this way, allow me to pass on a quote I heard earlier today, reportedly from download.com (which would be CNET, basically): "There's a theory that Microsoft released XP because Windows 2000 is too stable to be a continuing source of income." That's true as far I'm concerned. :) Down with XP!

yeah, XP sucks. Where i work, me and my IT department are part of a group who are totally against XP. Everyone who we have contracts with, wants to use it. We're like "no, you take that piece of crap and you throw it in the bin right now" We have contracts with over 1000 companies in Europe, and every company we (the IT department) have first hand communications with, w've mae sure they DON'T use XP. It does nothing but kill off everyone on the network who uses different OS's and/or different drivers. Anyway, as for my problems... resizing textures, doesn't help : Upating my OS, is a no-go. I have 120 gig of stuff on here, 40 gig is no problem, they are all CD based things, simple reinstallation... the other 80 gig is models, pics, textures, movies, other programs and so on. I have all my harddrives used.. so i cant back up. I think i'll do the old "put a square around everything and export piece by piece in Bryce" routine. Hopefully that will help. Thanks for tips and advice btw, much appreciated. Duck.

except that steph and clothes rendered. my problem was when i added a vicky to the image. I ended up buying windows 2K pro and unstalling that. since win98/SE cannot deal with virtual memory as well as 2K or XP. I wrote daz and they were sympathetic, but were no real assistance as to explain why excpet that the memory neede to keep seperate the textures and the Object is beyond what win98 can do

Psychoduck I'm using XP & it's no problem for me at all, I admit the spying software built in had me worried till I found out how to switch it off. so why the big downer on the most stable OS I've used in 12yrs? Rob

There's a memory fix at Curious Labs, try installing that. Anyway, one memory eating problem is mat files that add textures, just because the file itself is small does not mean that it uses little memory, a 24bit 3000 * 3000 texture is going to eat 3000 * 3000 * 3 Bytes regardless of the jpeg file size.

512 Meg isn't enough virtual memory for Steph! The "out of memory" in Bryce gives it away. Bryce is very good with memory. When using win98, I had set my virtual to 4096 Meg min and max (so it doesn't do that drive chugging thing while it adjusts the size) which seemed OK. Also, there's a MEMORY UPDATER for Poser 4.03 available free from CL. It allows Poser to use memory above 2Gig (including virtual). H:)

And windows ME is no better at handling memory that 98SE. Even with 1gig of ram on my machine ME could only play with about a quarter of it. I upped to XP pro and everything zips along, I can even do multiple hi-res figures with no hang ups. Also, in my ignorance, I put XP in on top of ME and everything loaded up okay (except the 16bit games don't play anymore, but I expected that). Jack

Poser cant handle more than 2G of mem combined (real + Virtual), you need a memory manager a better OS or the fix if you want to use more without problems.

Staale... It can with the memory updater from CL! H:)

I'm on a dual boot system.. ME and W2K. When I first got 2k, I hated it cuz it was very sensitive to mismatched ram sticks (when two or more instlled), and had tons of tcp/ip problems as well as driver problems for the joystick, etc. software didn't run either. Since then, SP2 and now SP3 has come out. Win2K is rock solid. ME, on the otherhand, is now troublesome and I occasionally have to manually delete my tcp/ip stack in the registry, and reinstall apps. My personal theory? Bugs deliberately introduced into ME to force upgrades cuz it was never like this at the beginning. But that's just my ufo conspiracy theory. So, 2k is stable, best OS that MS offers now. (better than XP for a lot of reasons). Some high end apps like Universe won't run in anything other than 2k. Most game peripherals now have 2k drivers. etc, etc. So I suspect I'll be on 2k only before long. And yes, it manages memory better than ME and norton AV does slow down ME quite dramatically. The new BlackIce 3 also interferes if you chose the application protection option. Norton doesn't work on 2k, but a cheapware called OnTrack works just fine with it. Good competetive product.

Windows XP is the best operating system I've seen to date. It is rock solid, easy to use, etc. Norton does work on Windows 2K. You do need to update to the proper version. I use Norton Systemworks 2002. I have absolutely no problems with Norton Systemworks. I've used it on all versions of Windows since Windows 95. No problems. 256MB of RAM is still very "light," when you consider all the wonderful Poser stuff out there. I have an Intel Celeron 533mhz computer with 512MB of RAM. Yes, I'd love to have a more powerful computer. I'm basically able to handle anything I get for Poser without resizing any textures. If you want to handle Poser without problems, get Windows XP. Increase your memory up to 512MB at least. You might also want to look at getting a larger hard drive. I devoted a 30GB hard drive to Poser all by itself. That includes all the Poser stuff I download and buy, and all my projects. That was the best decision I've made.

lemur01 you should be able to get the 16bit games to work with the compatability settings set to windows 95 for most of them. Poser4 works without having to change compatability settings at all which was a pleasant surprise for me. The more memory you throw at XP the happier it is, I've given it 1Gb to chew on & it runs like a dream. one small piece of advice I have is if you buy a new machine, buy a decent soundcard to go with it, don't use the one built into the motherboard, it really slows the machine down if you listen to music while you render like I do.

Windows ME sucks. The first time I booted up my new computer with ME, it crashed. I had tons of problems with it. I reformatted the drives, put on XP Professional, and it's worked beautifully ever since. I leave the computer on for over a week, work on it every night with Adobe, Poser, and several other programs open, and don't have any issues. You know why it's called W* ME, because F* ME is too obvious.

Memory can be the problem, or it can be even simpler. Sometimes Poser goes hunting for files, and when it can't find them, just gets lost. Try doing everything in stages. First load Stephanie with no texture and pose her. Then render. If there are no problems, apply the hair, and re-render. If there are problems here. Try another hair model with a very simple texture. If there are still no problems, apply a texture to her Steph. I bet thats when the problem shows up. If it does, try a different texture or remove the bump map (they take a lot of memory sometimes). I usually convert any high res texture (2000X2000 or more) to a lower res texture (1000X1000 or even 500X500) for easier handling, and only apply the high res for the final render. Also, try clearing out the memory cache and defragging your hard drive. If the swap file is dynamic and you've got a badly fragmented hard drive, it winds up writing bits of the temp files all over your drive and getting lost. Hope this helps.

I also, am curious as to why XP sucks?

I didnt have time to read all the messages, but I just wanted to say thanks. to all that suggested me to Install Win2000. I did it yesterday, and all problems were solved for me. no more render freeze. Thanks again... Aya, (at work)

I haven't any problem with Stephanie and have only 160M of RAM and the swap file can only increase to 200M (no more space in the driver C:, Poser is in driver F:), so I can have only 360M virtual memory maximum. I only use Windows 95, other Windows suck!!!!!!

Attached Link: http://arachnoid.com/boycott/index.html

so Bill Gates really is the Antichrist then, what a surprise. The only problem with the info on that page Allen9 is that you can turn off all the spying software, you don't have to let Microsoft scan your harddrive or download anything & the 3 times I've reinstalled so far I've not had to give them any personal details at all, nothing ever connects to the internet without my permission,plus I don't keep any personal details on the harddrive except my passwords for rosity & other sites of a similar nature. Rob

This is just a safeguard against piracy, get a grip. They've had the capability to get all you personal info before XP came out anyways. Like they're gonna do anything with it, you're one of probably a billion people with Windows software, like they can justify doing anything to you personally. Aside from registration/piracy prevention tactics...what is wrong with it?

Upating my OS, is a no-go. I have 120 gig of stuff on here, 40 gig is no problem, they are all CD based things, simple reinstallation... the other 80 gig is models, pics, textures, movies, other programs and so on. I have all my harddrives used.. so i cant back up. DUCK!!!! If you have a CDRW drive, back that stuff up!!! Trust me on this one!!!! If you dont have one...GET ONE!!! I mean it...you will not regret it!