OK, I figure the first crash is as good a time as any to jot down first impressions, etc. Read on... XP pro, (SP1 refuses to install) fully patched (AFAIK) as of tonight, P4 2Ghz, 768Mb RAM, Gforce4 440MX 64Mb 40.71 XP drivers, (uncertified, fixes a problem I've had from the past two revisions, cool :) overclocked (285Mhz core) Desktop 1600x1200 @24bit, rigged for speed, minimal graphical enhancements via the OS, DVD, CD-RW, NTFS 80Gb drive (20Gb poser partition, 10-50Mb swap file) additional FAT32 20Gb drive. C drive is a 6Gb partition, minimal setup, (most programs installed to different partitions)main swap file is 384-768Mb. Bought a month or so ago for the purpose of running P5. Turn off your virus protection BEFORE putting the disc in the drive, it completely locked out the DVD, the CD-RW opened the top level of the disc after 15mins or so, hung going into the setup dir, so I manually killed of the virus protection, waited for everything to calm down, then tried again, it worked. Browsed the CD, it's running Interlok as piracy protection, I dimly remember something about it phoning home from a while back, I've got the Dev Guide on CD somewhere, I saw it recently, I'll have to read it again. adaware may or may not take issue with it, if it does, Poser won't run... It takes bloody ages to install... :) The registration process was smooth, to a point, that point being where I left the desktop at the challenge screen, and moved the floppy to the laptop to access the web page, haved copied the response code back to the floppy and moved it back I noticed the screen saver had tried to start, but failed, (seemingly because P5 didn't want to surender the focus) it was locked displaying a black rectangle in the bottom right third of the screen. I hit ctrl-alt-del, screen blacked out, hit esc, it bleeped, clicked about, nothing, ctrl-alt-del again, nothing, hit a few keys, clicked about, then hit return, a program started (must've got lucky on the desktop) and reclaimed the focus, desktop was screwed, wallpaper gone, but I was able to get it back to 1600x1200 (from 640x480) I exited from the program I had started, (the nvidia driver install) and poser5 reclaimed the focus, couldn't click on anything on the desktop, but I didn't need to, used the keyboard to bring up explorer and navigate to the floppy, once I had notepad up I was able to copy the response text and exit. I pasted it into P5 it said OK, I rebooted, it came back up. It loads fast, faster than P4, Don appears, but it's slow, realy, realllly slooooowwww. Moving the camera, is like wading through treacle. The amusing thing is that if you select "fast tracking" the figure becomes a box when you move, but it moves at just the same speed as it does when you use "full tracking" :) I set up the screen the way I'm used to, discover what I think is a new box, only to find out that it's the character dials box that used to be integrated into the desktop. It "always on top" even when you open the libraries, (annoying, as you then can't close them again without first moving the dials box) I have the task manager open and minimised so I can look at processor utilisation. When the libraries are open, the processor is at 100%, open any other menu, etc. and it drops back to normal. Took a quick trip through the rooms, they took a second or so to display, but they all worked. Went through to the libraries, you have to doubleclick, annoying. Imported my P4 runtime folder. Changed the main camera focus to 110, dialing out on the Z axis is jerky and cronically slow, worse even than my P3 700Mhz,128Mb laptop was at doing this. took me at least 5 rolls of the dial to get Don to appear fully. Clicked "render" (having tweaked nothing) it started from top left and worked right and down in blocks, odd... Rendered OK, not fast, not slow. Doesn't look any different. Checked the render options, "so that's what firefly looks like..." turned on the P4 renderer, antialiased, etc. Hit "render" it renders from the bottom up using raster line, just as P4 does. Save out to desktop, pz3, then image, exit P5. Restart P5. Went through the libraries in more depth, Don has many entries, so does Judy, hairy, nude, hires, clothed with hair, etc. They take a few seconds to display when opening. The menu below the button at the top, stays open, makes it easier to navigate large directories like my P4 pose folder. Delete Don. Load Zrincx's Fina for the Preteen, click the MAT for Steffy Z's Gia. Experiments with moving body parts with the dials prove a bit slow, but usable. Nowhere near as fast or fluid as P4, but not nearly as painfully slow and jerky as the camera. Spent ages trying to get the eyebrows to work :) Finally suss it out, add new node, 2d, add image. then click and drag from the main menu to the new node. Simar fun with the lashes. But even though it shows the lash trans in the "eyelash" page, it's not actually connected, have to do the same thing, new node, attach. Add the blunt cut, add MAT's to change colour and length, tweak to fit... Render, looks a bit odd, I know... Lights! Open light folder, Darkhearted Pro-Luma GI (bright light) the rsr looks different. "Ah, using .png's not .rsr's. that'll be it!" click! Loads REAL fast! "impressive" Tweak eyes a bit, experiment with different camera modes, perhaps Pro Pack is worth it after all, this looks usefull :) Hit render, goes faster through the light shadow calculation than P4 does, but slows down on the render, screen saver comes on, locks out, I fight to get it back, get back to 1600, then maximise poser again. Render looks good, shadows are sharper, fairly slick... Drop into materials room, meaning to tweak hair, "need the face camera...", on a whim, I select the face and hands multi camera view, "I wonder if it'll render like that? Click "render" it flicks halfway back to the main pose window, the render progress bar comes up, gets to the first light, windows makes the "critical stop" 'bong' noise and the program dumps me back to the desktop. Didn't save the image, bugger! I haven't read the manual, and probably wont, unless I need to know something technical and I can't find it online. First impression? Slow, klunky, but worth persevering with. later jb

Were did you put your xp swap files. I have found they run alot faster if you put them on a differnt partition then the operaiting system. eccept for my laptop if I do it blue screens me on shut down. try changeing you swap files to a differnt partition. Thats the only advice I can give.

turn your screensaver off. they are making more trouble than what they're worth. my monitor runs from 8.00 p.m to 8 a.m. for five years now, and it shows no burn-ins. btw, fully textured view of v2 with steffy's textures runs on my pc (1333 athlon, 3/4 gig ram, ats gforce 4400 ti) only a tad slower than p4, and registration didn't work, i had to write an email to techs - answer came very fast, after some couple of hours. my theory is that every user gets five bugs. on the installation they are randomly spread over whole software. some get hit real bad, some get hit on the unimportant parts. socialism.

Ditto for virus-software ... way more trouble than they are worth. I'm not saying don't use virus software period, but it kills me how many people just install it with all the default settings and then wonder why they have so many problems. Just use it for spot checking suspicious files and periodically scanning the system. Running it in the background is a disaster waiting to happen. Remove virus scanning software from your startup, registry, etc. so that it only runs ON DEMAND, NOT in the background. But, alas, to each his own. :)

Hi, As specified, I have two swap partitions, the main one on my C: drive, and a smaller one on my D: drive, (after reading the "problem" FAQ at CL) where poser is installed. But you're right about the screen saver, having one that switches mode is a real bad idea... :) I actually don't use it to "save the screen" I use it as a display device, it's a 21" screen, it's like having one of those Sony digital photo frames :) It's displaying beautiful things should I happen to glance at it. :) later jb