It turned out to be Windows' virtual memory--it was set too high. Poser doesn't like anything above 2 gigs, and it was set to 4 gigs. I set it to 2 gigs, and the characters showed up. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

Here's the weirdest thing about all of it...I got the box on Friday, installed Poser and it worked. I was having other problems, so our network admins took it for a couple of days and rebuilt it, re-installing Win2k and other stuff related to functioning here at work (yes, I actually use Poser at work). Once I got it back, the previous problems were fixed but Poser now won't work. Ye gods. I guess I'm going to have to ping our network people again. I was hoping to avoid that.

SP2 is installed, as is DirectX 8.1.

I updated the Nvidia driver after running into the problem so that may not be it. As for SP 2, I honestly don't know. Our network folks installed Win2k...but I'll check and see. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the help. Your artwork is very nice, by the way. You have a great eye for lighting. I'm sure someone will come along with a fix for my problem.

Xena, I appreciate your responsiveness. I've installed, uninstalled, re-installed, ad nauseum. I even updated the GeForce's driver.

Win2k was the resident OS when I got the machine, which was Friday. And the version of Poser on the cd is 4.0.3, though I've also tried running the updater, to no avail.