Well in defense of Poser and the Poser8 team, Poser 8 is significantly more stable and faster than Poser 7. I also have Daz studio advanced and honestly trying to work with figures or lights or ojbects or materials in that program is a joke.

So what other figure apps are out there? not many that I know of.

For indirect lighting rendering Vue is still way way faster than Poser, but Poser 8 is easily 100% faster (and far better looking) than what Daz has mushed together with their various "uber" environments.

This XML files issue in now way hampers the actual program but it IS annoying and if someone hadn't tossed the idea of a RAM disk or I hadn't thought of using an alternate disk for temp files, yes, I would be sticking with P7 at this point.

I am confident the P8 team will figure it out. Today? No. Tomorrow? Probably not. Couple months? I hope so and I think so.

The cool thing is, now that I know this is happening to me, I can probably figure it out.<<

As I originally said way back when... I think it's happening to EVERYone... but most people don't notice it exactly. The files are gone before they are caught. The folders are invisible. You only see "stuff" if you right click on the temporary internet folder and view details (you see # of files and sizes) but they invisible, even with system and whatnot turned on.

Or you see with something like CCleaner and you can then navigate to each folder from within that app to explorer.

So most people won't notice them. That doesn't mean this is good. Stuff is still being written back and forth. But 99% of people will think it's not happening to them and I just don't think that's the case. If You yourself just noticed it... that's big. That's great news too. I hope :)

It means we're not all going crazy with weird things on our systems.

Thanks Bagginsbill. As for me, I am cooperating with SM as far any questions they are asking me, but we left off at how large my swap file was. Haven't been any communication since then.

I'm certainly happy to answer any questions though. I don't have anything crazy running on my machine.

Nightfall, the files are not visible per se, but if you right click on the folder it DOES say how many files are in there total. ... even if you cannot navigate to them directly.

So what apps might I have in common with others? Apps that >might< have kicked started this annoying process the OS is now doing writing out these XML files? 

I can think of two that communicate with virtual "servers" on the local machine. Two that are common among 3D users and users in general:

1) Itunes / Bonjour

1. Vue 8 Infinite

I also run several other packages that do similar things but they don't jump out at me as being common factors either between 3D users or users in general:

1. Logmein

And well.. that's about all I have that jumps out at me.

I know Vue Infinite creates similar (empty) XML files on occasion as it's rendering but it creates them in it's own temp folder. It would also write out s**tloads of *.mem files in this same folder if one didn't have enough RAM while rendering a dynamic ecosystem.

Vue 7 Infinite also did this. In fact, it's was the first app I noticed writing out essentially garbage XML files into a folder and bitched to e-on about this because it was driving me nuts. 10,000 or more in some cases.

However it seems with Vue 8, this problem as mostly gone away... for Vue.

SR2 may have fixed it on the Mac side, but not the PC side, the temp file issue at least.

SR2 DID solve alot of other issues... but sadly I'm still seeing an xml files being written once every second.

Actually it looks way more than that. I mean in 30 minutes there's way more than 1800 files, more like about 5000

I had (I say "had" because I've since put more stuff in it) a barebones windows 7, 64 bit. Clean install not an upgrade, not purchased as part of a package from Dell or something.

I wiped my drive and installed 7

Again, barebones with no Antivirus, no special firewall software, no other software. Nothing

Poser 8 was the first install.

It created the temp file even then.

I actually know this because I installed Win7 partly as a way to see if this problem would go away because it happened in Vista (32bit) as well.

12rounds, excellent interm solution, the RAMdisk idea. I set that up and works fantastic.

usamike, I'd love to hear your solution. So far I haven't "Solved" the problem of the files being created, just solved them being created on my c drive. Now at least they are getting stored on a RAM disk.

**>I'm not convinced that you should be writing to a SD disk so much - typically SD cards have no wear-levelling built into them and so you run a big risk of ruining your SD card altogethe<

**It's a high speed memory stick. Not a Solid State Disk. I meant "SD" as in an SD memory card.

4 gigs for about $19. If it dies in a month, it's not a big loss :)**

I like your idea about a ram disk though... that actually makes alot of sense, had heard of this before and I'm going to check it out. Excellent tip!
**

Actually, I know what caused this or at least why I suddenly got an error.

My g drive was formatted as FAT.  I had about 200 megs free on it and used this as my temporary internet location. Fine.

Problem is, as poser (ok, the OS) was writing out all these temp files (about 8000) of them, well FAT drives don't compress small files too well or at all, thus even though it was technically about 2 megs... it was taking up apparently 200+ megs of space on the drive for these files... the drive ran out of space, poser died. I had noticed prior to this alot of missing icons for items and their folders wouldn't open in the library.

I formatted the drive now as NTFS and going to watch a bit. The library items have come back.

This is a very very weird problem and obviously deeper than simply temp xml files getting written or not written.

Ok, so it's not Poser.

It's not the programmers specifically doing anything wrong. 

But I can't pin this on the OS either.... and it seems to me the newer technology here is Adobe Flex and I'd be curious if they've dug into this a bit since... hey...  whose the new guy on the bench in this mix? Not Poser. Not Windows or OSX. That leaves only one choice :)

Got this nice little error message just now. Apparently it's not liking my temp files on the g drive too much anymore :(

>>There aren't supposed to be any files.<<

Excellent. That's the answer I was hoping to hear :)

Glad you're working on resolving and hopefully there will be a fix one day. As I said, at least until then I found a workaround and I can keep using P8. 

*>>The files are produced all the time, even when you're doing nothing, because the GUI is polling the Poser server, asking it if it has any news, such as we're in the setup room and it should only show figures, or that you've selected a prop, so the "save a prop" button should be enabled.

The polling happens 4 times per second. It is done with an HTTP POST, which means it should not be cached, because it is a command, not a simple request for information, and so the response is expected to be different every time.<<*

This is the one thing that DOES bother me about the concept. I don't care that they are cached, or left over on my drive.

That is not, was not the reason I removed P8 until I found a solution.

I removed P8 (but put it back on now) because I felt I didn't want ANY application writing that many files to my drive, cached or not.

Now maybe I'm not understanding... and I tried to clarify this with SM Tech (JohnC)... 

But ultimately my concern was... if it's normal that in excess of 18,000 files would be written to my HD (whether they get removed by poser later is besides the point)... or should these communications be done soley in RAM or in one large temp file etc.

I<< don't want that many files written to my drives. Cached or not, clear out later or not. To me, that's excessive. 500. 2,000 maybe. Especially if they were kept and reused. But 15 or 18 thousand? Not on my drive if I can help it.

So that was really my base question (not to you, but just in general)... is that normal to write and that many files in one session. It's not whether they sometimes get cleared or sometimes don't. I don't care about that last part.

The files size the files take up is of no concern to me. It's usually only about 2 or 3 megs since each file is 1k.

It's simply the sheer number, over and over again.

So I guess if the solution or fix ends up being that the files are still being created and just remobed, to me, that doesn't really address my concern, but it may simply be a limitation of app you're developing and there's nothing that can be done about it.

My poser runtime folder has 56,000 files in 2300 folders. Ultimately,..I don't know.. but the application may not be up to the task of dealing with such a large number of files. I really don't know.

We will find the problem and fix it. But we are not going to abandon Flex here. I'm the quarterback. If we can't stop the caching then we'll change the protocol and skip the HTTP stuff, not change the technology.<

Awesome.

Who's the coach? JUST kidding. It's great that someone is really on board and aware there IS a problem. And hopes to solve it of course. :)

I only jumped into this thread yesterday but have been plagued with this problem both in Vista and now in Windows 7, 64 bit.

I don't know flex and don't want to muddy the waters so I made my comment simply on what I was told and the menu/trees being built in flash and I was like, "huh? well that makes sense it doesn't work or seems slow I guess,"

I won't lie... I did prefer p7's speed, if not the visual interface. And it didn't create excess clutter intentional or not.

That being said, I like your attitude that it's being addressed, it's a known issue, it's a problem and one day will be fixed. That IS great news.

In the meantime as I said, I have found my own solution to keep my drive from getting killed :)

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

For me the issue really is I don't want my c: drive cluttered up and fragmented daily with stupid poser temp XML files. I don't want them written and them removed in such vast quanities (18,000 in a session sometimes)

On my laptop I have a SD reader with a fast SD card that I use for readyboost. There's about 300 megs of free space on it after readyboost.

In IE8, 32bit version (64bit doesn't save the setting for some reason), you can choose where to store temporary internet files.

I chose this G drive (my SD card reader/card).

Rebooted.

I was expecting Poser to still write out to my c drive but to my amazement and joy it now stashes all this garbage on this G drive. Which I don't care about or care if it gets fragmented or is writing/reading billions of files.

This is great news for me. It means I can now go back to using Poser 8 and not kill my main drive.

Only a very small number of people who experience this have cooperated with SM to identify common factors. SM have not figured it out, because it has to be figured out entirely by asking you questions.<<

They must not be trying very hard because they basically blew me of. Smith Micro that is.

They essentially blamed it on CCleaner saying it caused the problem. Then they said that all programs do this. I said, maybe, but not 18,000 files in one 30 minute session... files that have absolutely no content except an open and close XML snippet.

I can send the thread along if anyone wishes.

I then requested they reactivate my Poser 7 which they kindly did (I give them credit for being nice) and I forgot how much I prefer that old interface.

I'll be sad to see the indirect lighting gone but a) blaming the temp files on my computer was not wise and b) I refuse to kill my HD with 10,000+ new files created and deleted every time I start Poser.

I don't care that they are deleted. I don't want them created in the first place.

And why blame CCleaner when it seems it's a Mac issue as well?

They obviously have no clue what it is but to me it's quite obviously related to the library being indexed and read and this crap left behind. And when SM mentioned "Flash" is not supposed to do this I nearly choked. FLASH? They've sunken so low they're writing parts of this in Flash??? Jesus. That explains it.

One other thing. If I had to guess, I'd guess this phenomena is happening on more than just a few poser machines. Why? Because these files are basically hidden even with view system and OS files turned on. Only certain file cleaners spot them.

They also get flushed on a reboot. Which is nice. ... and it means people won't even know they had been created and are now gone (and will be created again once they start P8)...

But again... they shouldn't even be written in the first place. It's killing the MFT. It's fragmenting drives. It's totally useless garbage. I caught it only by accident because i happened to have P8 running AND CCleaner at the same time.

The thousands of xml files is happening to me. I finally had to stop using Poser 8. I counted 18,000 in a 30 minute session with just loading the default scene that pops up.

That is to say, I just sat there and literally watched as files kept being created. Yet nothing was being worked on. I went outside for a few minutes and it was at 1,200. Thirty minutes later I came back and checked. 18,579.

I went back to Poser 7. 7 Does not exhibit this issue

I did notify SM about this issue.

Win7, 64bit. 8 gigs RAM, 10 gig swap file.

I just read the above post.. I am NOT on a mac. Repeat... this is a PC. :)

But it also happened in Vista/32bit, 4 gigs ram, 5 gig swap file.

My guess is the library they built trying to read the runtime folder and create the tree structure.

God only knows why the had to change this from Version 7 which worked just fine. Why would they use flash in a non-browser application is beyond me. Some programmer there obviously thought it would be cool but in fact it slows the entire interface down it seems to me. Aside from "Search" the entire library interface is terrible.

At this point until it's fixed I refuse to use P8 and have warned others about it.

I am using the latest SR as well. So no, it hasn't been fixed :)