Here's where you may want to go online and verify some things before setting them, unless you have a way to make some quick backups of your sytemfiles and whatnots. Go to the control panel on your computer (assuming you are using w98/98se) and go to the 'systems icon (or applet, whatever the hell ya call it, double click to open it up and go to the 4th tab, titled 'Performance'. At the bottomright of that you will then see a button called 'virtual memory'. Click once to open, and you will see the hard drive that you have set for rendering. BUT!!!! This is the setting for ALL of what windows renders. Called 'virtual memory' it is how windows handles all of its large files, which is why so much confusion exists over 'how much ram to put in my computer for 3d'. You might actually be 100 times better off for your poser work if you use Norton Ghost or something that does exactly what it does, make an image of what is now your C drive and place that on the 80 gig drive and use IT as your new C drive. your old C drive can then be an extra drive for storing completed 3d work files, etc. But, here is the part nobody wants to hear. It doesn't take a lot of time to get this stuff down, but as a 3d artist, know how your system 'caches' files is important so you can tweak your own system to the max. I got fed up with blue screens and trashed hard drives so I went to a couple sites on dealing with settings. I have to go find them now in my favorites, but I cant do it at the moment. In a couple hours I will put the info and the urls up here. It actually becomes a lot of fun once you wrap your head around it.:-)

I went looking for it, and yes it helped a LOT! Thanks geep!

My package arrived today! Couldn't beleive it got here that quick, but downloaded the veg file and upgrade to 4.03, and I'm on my way. Next stop, rendertown. Yeeehawww.

Well, at this point I'm just waiting for the FedEx driver to arrive since it was only $10 bucks or so extra than UPS, and holiday driving can really slow a driver/flyer down:-). I even had my Vue2 S# (from the 3DWorld mag freebie) to get the extra $10 off from the 199, but they seemed to be quite confused over that part, so I blew that off. As good as things are starting to sound, my anticipation grows, and good software design teams deserve the money anyway, so they can HAVE the ten bucks(LOL).

OK, I'm convinced. Thats it, I've folded, I'm getting it. I'm going to see if a store around here sells it (even though the probably don't), but if not, I'll just do the online order thingy. Three days to mail it huh? Damn thats a long time.:-)As much as I use P4 w/ PPP, that should keep me busy enough till I receive it, and I'll always have Bryce4 if I get the bryce itch again. Thanks again for all the replies, this is a great group. I'll let ya know when I receive it.

Attached Link: http://virtualtoybox3d.com

OK, I just upgraded to w2k pro. And I've done quite a bit of research as a result, but basically 98se works best with only 64 meg. Even if you ad more ram like up to 96 meg total, 98se actually drops in performance by 20-40% because 98se does it's crunching via 'virtual memory', which if you know what you are doing, you can change somewhat in 98se. In w2k pro, the same deal, different numbers. 129 meg is the norm, unless you have 1000 or so employees hitting it up for internet and intranet mail duties and other apps being run from different locations. THEN you should 256meg!! So, I've had 512 meg on my computer all this time thinking that would help my P4 w/PPP, and my problem wasn't that I needed more ram. I needed to access more hard drive space, and much faster than I used to. w2k pro does that. I was able to change the size of virtual disk accessed from 768 meg (I think that was the number) to over 3gig. Now my renders are back to thier previously experienced huge files, with nice 1000x1000 anti-aliased renders. With an Athlon 550 it does this all quite well, but there is another discussion thats just started here mentioning having more horsepower in the cpu. That (DOH!)I had only vaguely thought about. That will be my next step. Upgrade to more cpu power with faster frontside bus speed. I don't claim to know everything by the way, but I sure as am learning. Anyway, as long as I've had PPP, it's only just now starting to open up to me because it finally has room in my system to maneuver.:-)

Attached Link: http://virtualtoybox3d.com

Hey Devon, since you were also wondering, I got hold of SciFi guy again, and he replied, saying I should just put it last in the lines of code for that little segment. Then if it doesn't work out, you can just go back in (probably in Safe Mode if it got really bad I suppose), and change the '1' back to a '0'. Well, I tried it, and I was actually able to load a 15 meg file. I haven't been able to get more than 5 to 7 meg poser zips to load. I got too brave I guess and went for one of my old 20 meg zips, and ka-Blue-ee (get it? heehee.)So thats it for me. I'm going to w2k tonight. And many thanks to SciFiGuy for answering back! You rock, man.

Regarding post #10 from scifiguy, does it matter where the ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 line goes in the few lines of code that are there? I found the area of system.ini you refered to, and the line wasn't even in there, as you mentioned it may not be. Thanks!

OK, I saw the first post in which Devon said 98SE won't let you use all 512 meg of RAM. What the...!? NOW it starts to make sense. I am having the same problems. At first someone suggested it was a boot sector virus, and they ran some software that cleaned it and the PPP worked fine for her. But I DO use an athlon 550 which will has to use 98se (I've never tried NT4 though, so I gotta look around Toms Hardware site for info there) rather than 98. I bought all this friggin' RAM and it's not even being used by 98SE? How much does it actually allow? Thanks

Hey THANKS! I wouldn't doubt it if we cross paths on this again. Take care. Adam

OK, I'll bite. Which program, because even though the problems are a little different, it might be wise of me to do the same, and I'm using updated Norton stuff. If you still have the link to that software, maybe you can post it? Thanks, Adam

Attached Link: http://virtualtoybox3d.com

Same problem occured with SR2, and I was hoping sr3 would handle it. Someone on the yahoogroups poser list suggested deleting all of the rsr files from my geometries folders, and it didn't quite make sense, but I did it anyway and it seemed to help for awhile. I had become so accustummed to rendering huge files with multiple characters at 1200x1200 for a tiff file. Now I'm lucky if I can get one character and some props to render at 600x600 without the same error. And this is even after I've emailed with poser technical. I use an athlon 550 with 512meg ram, an invidia 3d graphics card, all compatible stuff, but I'm about to go back to just using sr1 again. I would rather have a few less features than to be getting the blue screen with such regularity. Darlissa, I bet when you try to open a large (7-10meg or more) ppp zip that you get the blue screen as well. Adam Smith

OK, if its a download issue then how 'bout this? I'll assume that, since you didn't go into detail about it, that in the zip on the server, there is a 'posette brown curly bottom.hr2'. Thats the file that's apparently NOT in my zip that I download. There is a 'posette brown curly bottom.rsr' in the file, but not the hr2 that should be with it. Can you send me the posette brown curly bottom.hr2'? I know where to put it, I've been playing with Poser4 for some time now. Thanks Adam

OK, I know I already emailed you, but this way the ebot lets me know when you've responded. Regarding the error for possette brown curly bottom 2.hr2, It's actually possette brown curly bottom.hr2, without the "2" after bottom. Sorry if that sent you on a wild goose chase. Adam

OK. I downloaded it again, and again there is an error. This is what the error message says: Error in possette brown curly bottom 2.hr2 What should I do at this point. By the way, I use winace, and it hasn't had a problem opening any other zip files from here or anywhere else. I've been using winace for about 5 months. Thanks.