frantically looking for an adequate emoticon that would convey my complete and utter speechlessness

I am utterly, completely bowled over by all the support, encouragement and help here at the forum.

Guys, I really couldn't ask for more than the help you're already given me -  I mean, just the fact I got so much advice (and a new PSU hopefully being installed by the end of the month) is already beyond my abiliites to adequately express my thanks to everyone who took the time to nudge this Vue duckling toward the right pond.

As soon as the power-supply gets fitted in, I'll do a test render in PLE and see if everything goes well, fingers and toes crossed (if not, then it's time to take my old boy of a PC to a radical - and gradual - reconstructive surgery).

Many thanks, forester  - will pop over to C3D, as well.

My motherboard is ASRock N68 -S and my current PSU sits at the back, in the top-left corner of the case (when you view the PC from the front).

Things one learns along the way, eh - only a couple of weeks ago before my Vue troubles I hardly knew anything about computers. By the time I'm done with sorting this out, I'll be practically able to rebuild the damn thing :-) .

Guys, thank you soooo much - I'm overwhelmed with all the fantastic info and help you've given - allow me to give you a huge virtual hug (I think my pathetic power supply can handle it :)

Shawn, I'm not even hopeless when it comes to anything more complex than changing the light-bulb - I am beyond hopeless, so I'm afraid my best answer to some of the questions would be a confused, blank stare. But - there are few I think I can answer, so here it is:

I do have two 'C'drives (I mean, they are not both 'C' at the same time, but they both have OS on them), one D drive (my DVD reader/writer), and all my runtimes are on a portable 320GB drive plugged in the computer's USB port. I often charge my Iphone through the computer's USB, too , or have it run in my iTunes at full blast while I work.I don't think there's a modem card or anything like that in it, I'm not sure about SCSI or network thingy

Until I saw the light - literally - and started lusting after Vue, all my renders were done mostly n DAZ, and the computer seemed to cope with it.

As for the PSU shopping, I was suggested a few that are within my skinny budget (when buying online they seem to be  bit cheaper) and come with decent reviews, 80+ certifications and enough power to allow for the upgrades in the future. It hasn't occured to me to take my PSU to the shop (yup - I'm a muppet ), I'm dreading the experience of pulling the stuff apart.

:) As the contents of my piggy-bank are distinctly on a slim side, I think it will be Frontier first  - and then the lottery win, and then...:dreamy-eyed:

Oh, don't worry, Melikia - I'll be keeping you all posted with what happens next. And :fingers and toes crossed: I'll proudly post my first render in the galleries here when I get the things working - and it will be Vue.

Oh, yes. I saw the light ^_^.

 

OK - new power supply it will be. I am going to ask the daftest of questions here again - what am I supposed to be looking for (wattege, brand, size of the fan) ? I have 3 year old Phenom x 4 (Agena) .

I've had a quick look around the computer case to see where can put more fans and there is one large available slot at the back. At the bottom front there's already a very large fan working all the time, judging by the distinct chill  on my feet.

Thank you all so much for your help and patience.

If it works, I shall not just buy Frontier - I shall steal, beg and borrow to buy Infinite...

I think, Shawn, you might be onto something -at least I hope you are.

I'm going to put me CSI cap on - please, bear with me, this might be relevant.

I've inherited this desktop from  a friend who used to live with us - when she moved back abroad last year, I got her home-bulit PC she used to play WoW on. Didn't think much about it, I had my lappy to play around. Last November my laptop died, and after having two motherboards replaced in the meantime, the general concensus was that not even a miracle of biblical proportions can help anymore.

So - after the New Year I shuffled to my spare room and fired the desktop. It looked immaculate, clean, tidy, had big fans that made you shiver with cold, just the kind I needed after the overheating fiasco my laptop put me through.

Until recently I've been slowly adding stuff to it, my software, rescued files from the laptop (I've even managed to find in the loft an ancent copy of Carrara from  a 3D mag.) I tried it all on the machine, it worked - slow, but it worked, and the temperatures were reasonable - 33 C when idling in Firefox and low - mid sixites when under full load during multi-hour render. However , the on-board graphics card that came with the motherboard was beyond pathetic - when I ran Cinebench, the result was  beyond bad - it was of the "Are you kidding me?!" kind.

By now I had downloadeed Vue PLE - and fell hopelessly in love (imagine - all them nice things I had for Daz, with Vue light, Vue enviroment creation, Vue rendering capabilities :mistyeyed:) After doing a few test renders of different sizes with just a sea plane and an atmosphere (during which temps climbed instantly to mid-sixties), I've braved myself enough to play with some freebie scenes found here at Renderosity and sharecg. The PC started struggling, churned out two lovely cinemascope pics of a respectable size. And then the first shut down happened. Thinking that my graphics drivers need updating (the computer was not in use for quite some time), I've taken care of that. Didn't help - the card's performance was unchanged and the shutdowns continued. Thinking that my poxy graphics was to blame, I've put a lovely Nvidia I had still in its box, new and unopened, that was bought a while back for my old desktop (now deceased) and never installed. I've updated its drivers to the latest version and ran the Cinebench test - awesome. Played like a song. However, I noticed all of the temps were now about 5 - 6 C higher. Of course this muppet (me) got a bit concerned but I was too extatic about the improved graphics to pay due attention - Open GL 3.3, Open CL, CUDA thingy, its own fan - what could possibly go wrong?

Then I fired up Vue - and then the hell broke loose.

I have two hard drives, one with XP and one with Windows 7 - I tried Vue from both (naturally the installed PLE version  on each drive matched the requirements of the respective OS) -  there was no difference. Dead the moment you get to the moment you start rendering. In fact, the shutdowns must have affected the drive with Windows 7 - now it won't even start - it just hangs on welcome screen and goes nowhere.

I've checked the suggested options in Vue display options menu, I've clean uninstalled/reinstalled the program, cleared out the render stack, Appdata folder, unchecked the background drawing and anti-aliasing - no joy. Nothing worked.

Last night, out of sheer desperation, I took the GPU out and went back to the pathetic onboard graphics. Vue came out of its corner, whimpered a bit, but it rendered a simple sea/atmo 300x200 render. It was teeth-pulling slow, it struggled, it was worryingly hot (all four cores chugging at mid sixities almost continuously) but it didn't cut the power to the computer. At this stage I dare not see if it could cope with the proper-sized render - shutdowns can't be doing much good to the hard drives.

Shawn, you have mentioned my weak PSU . I had a think.

The integrated card used less power, it is borderline useless, computer ran cooler.

New GPU has its own fan, performed admirably otherwise but needed more juice, computer ran hotter and the moment Vue demanded all of the power - everything shut down.

My power supply - 350W.

Are we onto something here? :hopeful look in my eyes:

I have no idea if this will help unravel the Vue/my computer mystery, my technical knowledge doesn't extend past the changing of the light-bulb stage. I've tried a few other posh programs in the past - C4D, Max, Lightwave, and they all sent me running for the hills screaming the moment I saw their interface. Vue is more intuitive, friendlier, and it does awesome stuff - I'm desperate to have it working. I know iI have only a personal learning edition, but I cannot commit myself even to buy Frontier until I am sure it will work - if my old Phenom quad-core is not up to it, then I'll have to start saving for the new machine first before I get anywhere near Vue...

:embarrassed: Thank you all, guys, for taking time to help out this computer/software illiterate muppet (me). I feel like a pensioner blocking the traffic lights in the middle of a rush hour traffic, because she doesn't know how to change a tire... If we can get Vue to play with me again, I promise I shall start saving for Infinite proper - I'm a convert, and I don't think I can live without it again. Shawn, I shall implement your suggestions as soon as I can - right now I'm finishing some work on Adobe and I cannot risk yet another power-down - when I started Vue this morning, it didn't even want to open - just hung there for ever 'initializing application, please wait'. However, there are a few things I think I can answer straight away. My motherboard came with an integrated 256 mb memory Nvidia GeForce 7025. Haven't used since I plugged in the 9500 GS, it will be about 6 months now. If I'm reading the thing correctly, my power supply is 350W. Vue will poodle on quite happily without any problems - as long as I don't render anything. I can have terrains, objects, full scenes, pose, modify, do whatever I like - but no render. Now it shuts down the computer on a simple sea/atmo scene, within 2 seconds of starting the smallest, 300 x 200 render. It cuts the power to computer instantly - I don't get to see any error messages, the death is instant and without warning. Last night I fired the Vue from my second HD, the one that runs Windows 7. I've ticked the 'software only' display option , rendered the smallest sea/atmo pic 'preview' style - it went OK. I moved to the next size up and ticked the 'fixed pipeline' display option - the computer turned off. (The CPU temperature was hitting 59 C - 65 C now - OK, I know that it could be lower, but my battered Carrara/Daz chug along with multi-hour renders - and with Photoshop in the background - at the same temperatures without any issues.) The NVidia GPU I'm using is capable of Open GL 3.3 and Open CL - should that be enough for Vue?. However - and this might have some significance in pointing out what the heck is going on, at least to those who have more knowledge than I do - unlike the XP that doesn't even recall Vue crashed it so badly it switched the machine off, Windows 7 seems to be able to remember something went badly wrong. And this is what the Event Log says regarding the last night's crash: - one critical event (telling me that the source was kernel-power, event ID 41, task category (63), user SYSTEM, level critical, keywords (2), Windows - 'The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first - this error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed or lost power unexpectedly) - yep, that describes it pretty accurately. It died. - then there are some other errors listed as 'Vue stopped interacting with Windows and was closed (source Application Hang) - then several of 'Some processor performance power management have been disabled due to a known firmware problem - check with the computer manufacturer for updated firmware." (source Kernel-Processor-Power), event ID 6, task category (6) By now I probably don't have to say that I don't have the foggiest idea what the above actually means... Some nice folks over at cornucopia's forum suggested to look for 'hidden folders' and delete those, uninstall PLE and re-instal again, run memory test, clear out the renders stack, but my grasp of anything more complex than opening an email is rather shaky Not very confident there, I'm afraid. Until I sort this out, I'm left with my memories of how fabulous Vue can be - my last practice sunset before Vue decided it don't like me no more, cropped and blown up (PLE lets you save unmarked 800 x 600 renders for up to 30 days - I know - e-on is evil, I've got the bug now and I can do precious little about it at the moment :sigh:...)

Deary me, it gets more complicated... The power-off started happening before the driver update.  When I installed PLE, Vue behaved itself, my PC behaved itself - everything was lovely for a week. Then the first shut-down happened. I thought - yep, I haven't updated the driver for the card (I was still poodling along with Open GL 2.1 ). Off I went, updated the Nvidia thingy, rubbed my hands with  warm and fuzzy feeling inside (seeing that it now supported Open GL 3.3 and Open CL) started Vue, played with a lovely sunset, kept the render size small and to 'preview', pressed render...  it rendered for a couple of secs - and then the computer went out like a light.

Didn't have system restore switched on - don't ask :sigh:. Too late now, I'm stuck with the latest driver. Everything seems to like it -  Daz likes it, Bryce likes it, even my old Carrara likes it, but Vue just don't wanna know...

The one program I was desperate to get up 'n' running...

But - after one of those shut-downs, I got an error message when starting Vue again, saying that the application terminated unexpectedly and that I should run Vue in compatibility mode asking me to "Click OK". I clicked - and it still shut down.

I feel like curling up under the duvet and  whimpering like  a three-year-old  who's just been told there's no Santa...

 

Thank you guys, for all your help so far - it means a lot.

Right - I have SpeedFan and CoreTemp running all the time, and the idle CPU temperature has been around 39 C (individual cores temp about 35 C).  At full load it rises to about 59 - 65 C (individual cores 48 - 55 C)

and it stays there stable, without spiking. Graphics card temp fluctuates between 40-44 C.  All fans seem to be working fine.

Now what really befuddles me beyond words is that this has never happened before - I can run Luxrender for 4 hours on the trot, with Photoshop in the background, without any probs - the temperatures are stable, there are no crashes, no freezes.

I've even tried to render in Vue first thing in the morning as I switch the computer on, from cold, and it still powers off the PC, just like someone uplugged the poor thing from the mains. Even if it were an overheating issue, how likely it would be to have the temps rise from 'cool ' to 'instant death' within the first three seconds of a render?

There's no anti-virus pop up before the powering off, no error screen, no warning, no hibernation - it's instant and total OFF.

I haven't tinkered with the diplay settings in Vue - I had no idea one could do that (and I still have precious little clue how to do it). How do I change them?

I thought about Pioneer - but decided against it. I already have DAZ 4 and I wanted to be able to import my posed Daz stuff into Vue for rendering. I don't think Pioneer lets me do that...:sigh:

:sigh: Did the uninstalling thingy - still shuts down. There's no particular scene that does it , and no particular size of a render - the 800x600 powers off the pc just as same as the tieensy-weensy one of 300x200.

My graphics card info is in the attachement -  the card is the same age as my pc but the drivers are up to date. I've run the Cinebench 11.5, and there were no issues - it rendered fine.

There were no other rograms running during the Vue render.

I fell in love with Vue, but I dare not touching it gain before I find out what is happening - I continuous powering off can't be doing much good to my hard drive... :sigh: