Run down all the usual culprets first...

1. are ALL your drivers up to date? (i.e. video especially)

2. is it a certain scene that is doing this or anything you do now?  If it's just one scene you're trying over and over again to render, that scene could be corrupted.  If it's more than just that one, then there's a bigger issue.

3. If all your drivers are up to date (or they weren't and you correct it and yet it STILL happens)... uninstall Vue, reinstall... sometimes lil gremlins creep in... ;)

The gurus in here should have more ideas and be better able to pinpoint what's going on...

My first version was, i believe, version 6 (esprit, then i added all the packs to it)... it wasn't too bad.  then came 7infinite, and BOY did I have headaches until it finally stabilized.  Then I jumped to 9.5infinite, and as long as I don't sculpt terrains, it "usually" does OK.  something about the terrain sculpting and running into the billions upon billions of polygons... YIKES lol.  (its a tool I have to learn how to control.... or put a clamp on my imagination!)

LOL - yeah, sometimes Vue itself has a temper tantrum!  My "monster" computer is one of those (really) low-end Alienware Aurora's... single core, i believe, but it acts like it has 8 cores (and sometimes this causes problems... talk about split personalities!) ...  and with 16GB of ram, it SHOULD handle everything I throw at it.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  (again, split personalities... one gets mad and stomps, taking my render data with it...)

Keep up to date on your Vue "fixes, patches, and updates"... as they find little issues, they do try to fix them (usually... ok, sometimes... ok, every once in a while!)

Also, the rebooting of the computer isn't just for the computer - when vue throws a temper tantrum, and a simple restarting of the application doesnt work, it's usually cus Vue has "stomped" on your computer's "toes" and made it cry.  ;)  (again, personality thing LOL)

But glad restarting Vue helped... shoulda suggested that first, but (we know what happens with assuming)... well, i assumed ;)  (gotta stop doing that!)

And good luck with getting a version that works all the time... with them cranking out new ones every 6 months or so... i don't see it happening any time soon.  It'd be nice if they'd take a break from making new versions and FIX the ones they have out, THEN go back to creating a new version, making sure it is stable and works the way they promise before creating yet ANOTHER new version.  Or even if they just went back to releasing a new version every year instead every 6 months, giving them time to get the last version 99.9% stable before launching a new, buggy one.

ok, personal rant /off.

LOL

not personally, but i don't have Vue 10... my suggestion, shut down your computer, let it sit a minute, then start it back up.  Make sure all programs running in the background that aren't needed are off...

For me, vue just crashes whenever i push things too far and my computer is "tired" LOL.  Usually a nice shut down (NOT reboot, as in my opinion - could be wrong there - a reboot doesn't dump EVERYTHING out of the memory) fixes things.  (yes, my computer has a personality - a bit cranky sometimes, like it's operator LOL)

hope this helps...

~meli

A very HUGE thank you!!!!!!!

Wow, spam! blinks

It's an Aurora. We thought the cat was doing it (power button is on top of the tower), so we used part of her cat kennel to solve that possibility. But it kept happening. So then, we thought it was the power strip, and the cat was hitting the button just right... So we used something else to solve THAT possibility... Still did it!! Lol. My only other thought - besides a faulty "on" switch - is the power outlet itself. Something that I can't readily test :(. The outlets in that spot are strange, the outlet is only 'on' when the lightswitch is on (and after housemate turned my computer off "by accident" one day by screwing around with the lightswitch, I promptly duct taped that switch in the "on" position). It could also be the surge supressor/power strip acting up. While hubby & I were on our honeymoon, it seems we had lightning run in on the electrical lines... We didnt discover this until the past few weeks, though. The surge supressor did it's job and saved the printer - the only thing that was plugged in to that at the time- but the "surge" light is now red. The other supressor that had the Wii attached is also now glowing red... And this was when we realized it had happened - we moved the Wii, and discovered it's power cord actually had signs of fire damage. Still works, though! But now, If there's even a hint of thunder or lightning, I run around and unplug EVERY "important" electronic. This all happened (surge/lightning) the week before my computer arrived, thankfully. Thankfully I had the habit of unplugging during a storm already in place, but housemate is a bit of a brainless fellow... Doesn't think of such things. If we had been home that week, nothing would have gotten damaged.... But like I said, it could be the surpressor/power strip. Unfortunately, can't afford right now to replace it. All our extra && is going to something I consider much more valuable & precious than even my computer... My 14 yr old daughter :). Long story there, and not something I'm gonna say in public cus it could screw everything up... As it is, the people involved are suspicious of what's going on... But when things come to fruition, you can bet I will be dancing for joy... And doing an OT post announcing. :) Back to topic... Is there a way I can test the outlet and/surge supressor-power strip easily? If I could eliminate those as suspects, then i'd know it's my machine.... :(

Geekatplay!!!!! For sure!!!! Also, look for LVS - an online "school" where "classes" last 6 weeks. Peggy Walters teaches and EXCELLENT three part Vue class (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). If you take her class, be sure to download allllll of her excellent lessons - they make great references after graduating her class! I can say from experience - totally worth the time & $$ spent. It jump-started me years ago, and even though I thought I knew a fair bit, I started at the beginning and was VERY glad I had. Just another option should you choose to use it :) But one of the best things is - play! Ask specific questions, the folks here on this forum are great... Extremely helpful! Poke around in Vue... And remember - for what you see at first... There's likely to be at least three or more "layers" of things you can access that are "hidden" (not really hidden, just tucked away)... Click, click some more, and check things out! Don't let it overwhelm you, the "deeper, more powerful" stuff will come in time and with more experience - but again, geekatplay - rocks!!! Start at the beginning with their stuff, learn the basics. Then expand :) Welcome to the awesomeness that is VUE. :). Welcome to the family :) ~meli

Mmmm, good to know about the blue ray!!! I haven't used my blue ray drive yet, so it never occured to me that there could be issues with it lol. Mobo drivers... I SHOULD be up to date on that... But then again, who knows??? Hubby grabbed my machine as soon as it arrived and I didn't get to mess with it til the next day. If he had LISTENED to me, all drivers woulda been updated BEFORE installing poser, vue, and Photoshop. But... He paid for it... Now I'm going back through and discovering things that should have been done - and wasn't. His thing is "it's a brand new computer!!! It should have everything ready!" - this after I had to install flash player on firefox, which, btw, I had had to download & install. rolls eyes. He expected me to be able to just install my programs and have no issues... Sorry, darling, but in the REAL world..... Lol! I do have an interesting "issue" I can't figure out, though. I have 2 choices at night - screen saver on and don't shut down, or shut down and UNPLUG the computer. If I shut down and don't unplug, the computer turns itself on in the middle of the night! It gets "stuck" at the login screen. For a while, I thought housemate or his flight o fancy was turning it on as a prank... But one evening I shut down, I was the only one here, and half hour later went to the kitchen and passed the computer - and it was on! 0.0 I have checked everything I can think of, there is nothing scheduled for odd times of the night... It just... TURNS itself ON! How very bizarre!!!!! So now there's a running "joke" in the house that we have a ghost who likes my computer... And, it seems, toilet paper. Don't ask... Really long story on the TP. Housemate also found a pic online of this house, and it's obviously empty... Yet in the room that hubby& I have for our bedroom, there is a diaphanous figure -looks male to me- looking out the window, and on the porch, three more figures - adult male, adult female, and pre-teen girl all peering in various front windows - and they are see-through as well! That's the origin of our "ghost" jokes... Like the fact that none of us play tennis... But my dog loves to tear the green cover off of tennis balls. When we moved in, there was ONE tennis ball inside, and one in a flower bed (I threw the outside one away cus it was gross). Puppy quickly decimated inside ball, and I threw it away. The next day, another tennis ball appeared. When it got destroyed, I threw it away. Two days later a small dog toy tennis ball showed up - I threw it ASAP cus autumn was trying to swallow it whole. Yep, you guessed it - next day another normal tennis ball appeared! Every time one gets destroyed and I have to throw it out... Another appears within days. Erk, sorry OT lol. But maybe somebody can figure out why my computer likes to turn itself on? I'm at a loss!

"SO FAR" this one is OK... I caused Vue to do an "almost" crash (i have no idea why Retopologizing a terrain causes out of memory issues), but for the first time, it actually recovered itself instead of completely crashing and causing my system to do a hard reboot.

I did notice a bit of flickering, so if it starts driving me loony, will try that 275.65 driver, Thelby....

Retopologizing - i know this is supposed to correct the "stretched" polygons that terrain sculpting can cause... but why does it sound like E-ON is apologizing in the very name for the fact that it doesn't seem to be able to handle what its supposed to do?  chuckles  I must admit, though - every time I attempted it before, ... BOOM!  Instant crash, instant rebooting of computer.  THIS time, it chugged, it clunked, i actually HEARD my video card for the first time EVER... it screamed a resource warning, it complained bitterly saying it was going to crash and to basically cross my fingers, my toes, and even my eyeballs that it could save before doing so... but it did it - it saved a backup, and then - with a lot of patience on my part - even allowed me to "save as". 

I wish there was a way to reduce the number of polygons in a terrain that has been sculpted - and still be able to access the terrain editor later (i did discover the baking to polygon thing... WHY do they call it "baking"?)... my sculpted terrains tend to run anywhere around 8 million polygons on up... at least for the image i've been TRYING to achieve (been working on this for almost 2 weeks straight now, and still havent gotten further than the terrain... GRRR)... only have two terrains in there that are still terrains - the other two were baked and are now crispy lil objects. ;)

At least I was smart enough to save the terrain I wanted Retopologized out, bring it into a clean scene, and then do the Retopologizing in that - otherwise, i believe the thing would have completely crashed - Hmmm, but then I woulda been able to completely test out my problem... Vue crashing causing computer hard reboot...

i just didnt want to damage my 25th (or more) attempt (file) of this scene.

Anyways... like i said, if I run into any more "snags" or the flickering thing starts annoying me to no end, gonna update the driver yet again LOL.

wow, that was easier than i expected!

gone are the days of ripping my hair out trying to update drivers LOL (one reason I hated updating...)

crossing fingers that this solved my issue...

Thank you again, Bruno!!! =D

awesome!  thank you! =D

Now to figure out how to do this....

yikes!

Reviving thread...

Ok, I have my lovely new computer, and aparently the video card driver isn't very happy with vue - when Vue crashes, my entire computer reboots and when it comes up, I have no mouse, so have to do a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to shut down & bring it back up to have a mouse.  Very annoying.... ;)

Video board model: NVidia GeForce GTX 590 Video driver reference: 8.17.12.6785

I was told by E-On tech support to update my video driver and see if that helps.  I've heard horror stories about a certain NVidia driver (270.61), and I see there are several releases more recent than that one.  I am looking at 275.33 (latest WHQL - not beta).  Anyone with actual experience with this one?  I looked up the one that people had rolled back to from the disasterous one - 266.something - but it didn't state that it was for the 590, only the 580 & another one similar but with a lower number.... would that one work with my 590?  I'd rather have one I KNOW is pretty stable... and stick with it (if it aint broke... don't fix it!)

Help?  grins

THanks everyone!

~Meli

(getting the hang of her new machine & Vue 9.5i... sculpting terrians is VERY fun!)

AHHHH, makes sense =D  Basically a virtual drive that uses RAM instead of hard disk space.  (had a virtual drive before... never done one using RAM before, though LOL)  it does make perfect sense that using the RAM would make it a lot faster.

It has liquid cooling; it also came with a thermal monitoring program, but I have noticed its hard as heck to access it when even rendering in poser lol. It's part of alienware's dashboard (command center? Lol). As for ram-disk... I have no idea what that is or how to go about setting something like that up. Can you explain more? (will look up that other hw-monitor thing, too. I haven't seen my CPU hit above 86F so far, but I haven't managed to access it during a render)