Those of you who are experiencing OE: crashes, especially on ME, are any of you running any of the following programs? Norton 2001 Easy CD Creator 4 by Adaptec Easy CD Creator 5 by Roxio If you are running Norton 2001, consider 2002. If you are running any of the Easy CD Creator programs, consider uninstalling and going to Nero instead. If you get an error message that is defined, go to the microsoft knowledge base site and put in the error code (OE:018) etc., and read the knowledge base. Its very possible for a program install that is totally innocent to manifest an instability that is known to exist with some of the above mentioned programs.

I really hate the fact that you know exactly what I have loaded on my computer. Thank you for the head's up ... I probably would have crashed and never known what was causing it. :(

Correct me if this not true, but the last time I did the W2k auto update and chose their media player 7.1, I do believe that it installed some adaptec drivers. I do not remember if I saw it as a subdirectory or via on of the reg cleaner programs. Louis

I don't know that adaptec drivers for media player are an issue, but when I was dealing with OE errors some months ago it came down Easy CD creator. If you look around, you'll see that program given away free with a lot of puters that are storebought.

To add to the irony of all this, I discovered my Norton was expiring next week anyway. Downloading the update is, however, faster than trying to download the patch to Poser 5. Does tending to the Poser baby ever end?

Humm.... There seems to be a big difference between Roxio's 5 and 5.1+ drivers. Whenever upgrading CPU or even video drivers, it is recommended to upgrade Easy CD creator and Direct CD. When changing CPU generation, do not install the same version of Roxio drivers, even if they worked fine with the previous CPU configuration. Luck, Q

I've had it with Poser 5. I bought more memory. I got rid of Norton 2001 and Easy CD Creator 4 by Adaptec. I wasted six hours downloading the new and imprved patch. Followed all instructions meticulously. And went to start Poser 5 and got not only the blue screen, but my computer crashed to a black screen thereafter. And I am tired of hearing about how I am whining if I express dissatisfaction with this software. I know I'm a simpleton when it comes to software but I've never had this many problems with any software I've installed before. I don't know if Poser 4 will take me back or not. I don't care how cute this program works for the gurus...for a simply hobbyist like me, it isn't worth the cost. That sound is Poser 5 and my hard earned money flushing down the toilet. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. I'm going to bed and putting this ghastley experience behind me.

You're not whining. That blue screen has a code on it that you need to research on the MS knowledge base. I only pointed out some basic problems. However, and sorry to say this, but even when uninstalling CDcreator 4, there are some overwritten dll's left behind. One thing you might do is to reinstall win. I don't mean cleaning your drive, but in windows, run the setup program again. That may overwrite some of the dll's that Norton and Adaptec alter (these dll's are small programs that don't get removed because they are needed for other things and merely altered by the installation of Norton and Adaptec.) remember to back up. If you're blue followed by black screening, then I think your OS is in dire need of repair.

Be careful. If you're not familiar with reinstalling from win, then don't do it.

LOL Poser 5 is oooooooooonly $329 or $590 depending where you live , add to that the replacement cost of the rest of your software and or hardware in the hope that P5 won't crash and your "Oh my gawd, it's only $329" piece of bugware turns out to be a major money pit.

I've also had it with P5. As a last desperate effort I uninstalled it then reinstalled it. When I tried to open P5 it crashed the puter no blue screen just a black one I think that I'll just cut my loses and stay with P4 Alex

Normally I'm the voice of doom and gloom, "I'm only happy when it rains..." But as the good Dr Legume says: "It's only software" There was always going to be dissapointment, but CL had to get it out the door to keep food on the table. Now while they could have handled this better, a lot LOT better.. I don't doubt for an instant that they'll sort it out eventually to most, if not everyone's, satisfaction. Just give them time, they're broke, the economy is in the toilet, there's a dock strike, and Dubya is about to drag the US and the UK into another war over oil, compared to this, P5 is small beer. So chill, re-install Norton and Easy-CD, blow the froth off a couple and come back in 6 months, (If we're all still here :) you know it makes sense... :P later jb

My sentiments entirely JB

There has been an awful lot of comments on the geek forums on the roxio/norton/M$ (sorry Microsoft) habit of inserting DLL's that do not uninstall. There was I recall an advisory from MS not six months back that if you installed Roxio 5 and upgraded to media player 7.1 it would hard crash your system because media player had cd rom burning software built in. MS advised not using Roxio and reinstalling the OS.
There is nothing more frustrating than having software go tits up (technical term).
CL was under immense pressure to produce P5, not only financial, but pressure from this very forum. I remember some of the threads from three of four months back when Steve Cooper first put up some P5 screenshots that the
pressure built and built until really CL had to do something or lose total credibility.
I lucky enough have a stable but slow P5 and I'm happy waiting for the wrinkles to be ironed out of SR1.

I agree with Hein, though. I'm just completing an order for components to build a poser only machine - 1000 so far counting.

Some Cheap upgrade

PC

I've decided to take the safe track here. After hearing about all the crashes, reformats and subsequent reinstalls, etc. I bought one of those removable hard drives. (Cheap; with the caddy and 40gb 7200RPM HD less than $150.00 Canadian.) When my copy of P5 arrives it will have the drive all to it's lonesome with only a couple of companion programs with it. (Photoshop, Poser 4 and Lightwave probably.) That way, a reformat will mean only Win 2000 reinstall and a couple of apps. I have had more than what I need of reinstalling fonts, programs, work related stuff, configuring dial-ups, finding backed up files on poorly labeled cd's (my fault, I know), printer, scanner, well... you get the picture. Easily a whole Saturday is toast. No more risk of cross-contamination for this guy.

Well... I tried it. I installed the patch and everything seems to work ok. I have Roxio's 5.1 drivers and M$'s mediaplayer 7... No Norton tools though... Win2K, here. Strange. Any info about this reported conflict would be much appreciated. Thanks, Q

I'm glad some of you think spending $200 here and $200 there is cheap....clearly you have a different economic base than I do, and I'm pleased for you. I wish I had that kind of money. The fact is that I took my hard drive to be be checked (and have the memory expanded) before I installed Poser 5, because I wanted my system to be working as well as it could when I got the software. If my operating system is now in dire need of repair, it's because of damage done trying to get Poser 5 to work. I don't have the technical expertise some of you have. I didn't start out thinking I was going to have to rebuild an entire computer system to get Poser 5 to work, and my modest opinion is that I shouldn't have to. I'm not a prefessional graphic artist...I will never recoup the money I've already lost in this venture. But it does puzzle me why people are having such varying experiences with Poser 5. Some people are sailing through the whole process and and some of those are thinking those of us with problems are idiots. I doubt if I did anything different with my installation than anyone else, and it is extremely unlikely that I have some peculiar software set up that causes Poser 5 to crash. I think Poser 5 really wants its own computer with nothing else on it. Well, I can't afford that. Oh well. It was, for me, an expensive lesson learned.

dialyn: I don't know what to tell you. I've been through times like these. Once I was even crashing in SafeMode and the engineers I called for help wouldn't believe me. I hope CL support will be able to help you out. It's a rotten feeling. As for the different experiences from one setup to the next. Ya, it is strange, it happens even with the same type of computers. I wish you well. Q

I'm sorry dialyn. I didn't mean to imply by my post that money is of no issue and that every dollar doesn't have any value in my family either. It does. And you're right, no-one should have to spend extra money to safeguard against issues that should'nt exist in the first place. I'm like you in that I'm without any working knowledge as to how these issues occur, and am also a hobbyist. To me, what goes on inside my computer is all black magic with batwings and eye of newt. (whatever newts are.) I suppose that's why I decided to get the drive. I compared the cost of having someone properly reformat my drive after a crash against the extra drive. If P5 crashes it, I'll take it out and put it into a drawer and have it cleaned when I can afford it, and reinstall P5 when reports on this forum indicate that the sharks are out of the water. In the meantime, our system can still be used and I'll continue with P4; still able to type letters, be used for family homework, etc. I didn't upgrade because I could easily afford to, I got it because with these issues I didn't think that I could afford not to. But you are 100% right. No-one should have to. Best of luck in getting enjoyment out of your program in the very near future.

I do not believe that a removable drive would be 100% useful. If the OS (Operating System) and applications are on the removable drive, and the drive is pulled, any other drives would not be usable; since they need an OS to access them. On the other hand, if the OS is on a fixed drive, and Poser and the applications are on a removeable drive, then you still have the system files from the installed applications within the OS folder (ie, c:windows) when that drive is removed. If there is a serious enough issue, a removable drive may not solve anything, but introduce other issues.

Hmmm... not sure I follow. (no surprise, I often don't.) What my idea was is to have Win 2000 on my swappable drive with Poser 5 and related files and apps on it. The drive that would swap in it's place would also have Win 2000 and my regular working files and common applications on it. If Poser5 pulls some kind of a stunt and messes up the OS, I would pull the drive and swap in the other one and carry on and backburner P5 until issues are resolved and I can get the pulled drive reformatted again. I could easily be missing something here, and it is quite possible that my logic is flawed, but that was my intent.

A removable drive may or may not complicate issues. This is why... Poser5 is using Interlok (from a company called Pace) as it's anti-piracy/registration tool. When you register, Interlok writes a control block to disk (direct, not through the OS) it checks for this when P5 runs, (which is why the challenge and resonse are the same if you install, register, uninstall and then re-install. The only way to get rid of it, (as I understand it) is to do a low level format of the disk, or blank the MBR (the Master Boot Record, the place where the drive holds the table that tells it where the files are) which will accomplish the same thing. Now I'm not sure which drive Interlok writes to. Presumably the boot disk, as this is constant. But it could just as easily be the drive you install to, if different. I say this as CL has stated that you get 3 installs for free then you have to talk to them. Most people will only ever need one, as the boot disk will remain the same, so will the auth codes. But if you start swapping drives I guess you'll find out soon enough :) later jb

But if I have Win 2000 on the swappable drive that has Poser5 on it will that not become the boot disc? My intention is to have the OS on both of the swappable drives, independant of one another. In the event that he P5 disc mangles then would I not be able to swap back in the other drive with it's own OS and applications intact? I don't understand how any security related files can be written into a drive that is not in the machine during an install. Or am I missing what you are trying to relay? My efforts are directed at trying to prevent "downing" the family computer if Poser corrupts it and causes these black screens reportedly appearing on occasion. I hope I didn't make a mistake here because I already bought the drive and caddies. Yet another example of my ability to mindlessly act before asking someone who knows what they are talking about. :(

Krimpr, I think what your doing with a removable drive will work. Essentially, what you're saying is that you will have your entire computer boot on one drive or the other, not a hot swap arrangement. I think you're saying both drives will be primary active partitions and its one or the other, never both. Oddly enough, I don't have these kinds of problems with P5. I posted the thread because I had similar problems on winME some months ago. If anyone should have problems, it would be me because I have ME and 2k loaded in dual boot configuration both on the same partition but different directories. They share IE6 and they share all my programs. If I load Photoshop in a directory called PS55 for win ME, I then see if it runs in 2k off that same directory or if it has to be reloaded. If it has to be reloaded, I reload to the same directory and overwrite the program. This saves a lot of disk space. Say it can't be done, but I'm on a rock solid stable machine. Though getting there was a heartache after realizing that dll's were getting overwritten and had to be replaced. That's why I suggested rerunning win setup from the windows run box or from the CD while still in windows. It will keep your registry and reload some of the dll's that Roxio etc, changed. It was the only way I could stop the blue screens even after uninstalling roxio.

Whew! thanks EricoSD... I was beginning to think that I had flushed more money that I really shouldn't have spent down the toilet. I guess I should have specified that I didn't mean a partition setup on a common drive. What I bought is a caddy into which you mount a hard drive. The kit includes a rack that installs into the computer, and you plug the caddy into it and boot up. (Takes about 4 seconds to swap, 3 if you're in really good shape) The hard drives become like mega floppies complete with OS, files, storage and software. ...was worried there for a second...

To clarify, yes EricoSD you are right. Only one drive would be physically in the machine at a time. One with P5, and one without.

What I was trying to say was this... From my understanding of how it works, Interlok, (the piracy protection/registration tool) writes out a code block to your disk when you register. If this is on the same drive as your OS, and your drives are swappable, one with P5 one without, you'll be fine. But... If you have two identical OS drives, (C:) and P5 is installed to a different drive, (D:) then P5 may only work when the OS drive you were using when you installed P5 is installed. No control block, no poser5. Think of it as a two part key you need the app and the control block to function. later jb

Now that it is explained better, I do see that it should work: Swap Drive 1: W2K & normal applications Swap Drive 2: W2K & Poser & graphics applications I was under the impression that there was only 1 swap drive. My bad. :0)

The only thing that I do worse than understand what people tell me is to explain what I'm thinking. I'm kinda feel like that guy in a bubble sometimes. Nite all. :)

Curious Labs posted the Tpkd.vxd driver in the Poser 5 uploads folder. For those of us with Windows 98/ME, we need the older drive (this exposition for anyone who hasn't read all the threads this matter). At any rate, I downloaded the driver and Poser 5 appears to be working. I guess I have to stop whining for awhile. Many thanks! I was at the brink of giving up but you encouraged me to persist. I truly appreciate it.