My current machine is an 800Mhz, 256 RAM, 2 x 10 gig HDDs, running win 2k.... ie. pretty crap, but I'm having a new machine built soon. I had poser 5 shipped to my mother in the UK and it's currently wending it's way over to Italy. Should be here this week. OK, this is the plan. Format and defrag the D drive. Install poser 4 and 5, plus patches on it with NOTHING ELSE on that drive. If (huge 'if' at the moment) it works, that drive will become my permanent poser drive, and I'll transfer it to my new machine as a 3rd HDD. Thereby solving any challenge/response problems. If I don't change the HDD, I can do as many re-installs as I want. Right? 10 gigs is way more than I need for poser. Current poser 4 is just over 1 gig. It sounds like a good plan to me, but it doesn't take into account the Murphy's Law factors (should that be Weinberg's Law?), like malevolent, evil software with a life and a will of it's own. But the alternative (ever more attractive) is to never install it and save my sanity. Whoever heard of being scared of software??? Sheesh!! So, what I want to know is this. If I transfer my HDD to another machine, will I still have to re-install anyway for the registry crap? Or will my posers run? mac (fingers tightly crossed, crucifix clanking and nose wrinkling at the smell of garlic outside the windows)

I'm thinking it said somewhere that the registration is tied to your primary drive whch would mean that you would have to reregister.

Its running ok for me on my jumbled mess of a machine. Maybe by the time you get your copy, the patch for the patch for the patch for the release version will be out.

Hey Jimmi I think there are elements tied into the registry. When I registered ,the passcode thingy(technical term) wrote to the operating system drive - not my poser drive. I think CL would look at upgrading to a new machine as a valid reason to re -registering. Look at the numerous threads on installing. It does seem that if you have a good stable OS fully patched up with a stable install of Poser 5 and upgrade to SR1 it works. It looks as though if the install is unstable or misbehaving the patch seems to make matters worse. PaulC

I don't have Poser 5 yet so I'm not familiar with the registration stuff. I do know that my systems guy made disk images of entire drives for me. He also backed up the registry. This enabled us to reformat drives and just dump the disk image onto it. If the disk image was made on the drive with the os we didn't have to reinstall windows as it was in the disk image. Just a suggestion that might help. If you're interested I can get the name of the software he used to make the disk images. Good Luck. Holding those crucifixes too long can interfere with being able to operate your mouse.

Hmmm.... So it seems that CL's claims of 'If you don't change the drive, you don't need another challenge code' aren't true. At least, untrue if you shift the drive to another machine. Pity. It seemed like an easy way to keep all my poser stuff in one place and carry it with me as I changed machines. But it appears that the code is tied to the the registry in some way. Oh well, I'll still do it, although I may wait till I have the new machine before I install. I'm in no hurry to use p5. In fact, the only thing in it that interests me is the cloth room. I just know though, that the way things go with me, I'll have moved machines or had to reformat at least 3 times in the next year. I can't even remember how many times I've re-installed poser 4. At that point, I'll just hassle the life out of CL for more codes. What can I say? Life's a bitch and then you buy Poser 5. mac

heyas; no, mac, there is no 'install only posette' option just for you. ;)

I'd like to know myself. In some other threads some of this communities code wariors made mension that some programs modify system dll files in the windows directory. If P5 happens to do this then it won't be happy if it goes to use them on a different windows install and the dll modifications aren't there. Anyone have more spacifics on this? Please tell. This could help me as well! :) Good luck and may the force be with you! :)

When you buy a new box (CPU) you will get a faster HD, are you sure that you want Poser on your slower, older HD?

I have installed P5 to my "D" drive but it has written files onto my main "C" drive. After a monumental crash trying to get it in, I did a format and re-installation. The challenge code was still there afterwards. I read somewhere in the forum that the protection system is based on the serial number of your main drive and that only a low-level format (filling the drive with zero's) would remove it. A disk image would only work on the drive that you originally installed on and got a response code for... there would be no point in having a protection system if this was not so. A possible solution to keeping Poser seperate from the rest of your programs would be to have two hard drives with Win2000 installed on both of them. You could keep one for P5 and get a code for it, etc and boot up into the system to use it. For your sanity's sake, get the CL updates and apply them before using P5 - I have had no problems since doing so. If you have two drives available, there is no reason why you could not back up your complete Runtime folders to it at regular intervals for both P5 and P4. I currently do this and have separate Runtimes for posette, victoria and experimental stuff. However stuffed and unworkable the original gets, you only have to delete it and replace it with a tidy back-up copy. This helps prevent your finger wearing out scrolling down the MAT/Pose files.