You were right! THE PROBLEM Windows SP2 is deeply rooted into windows. Even after uninstalling service pack 2 the firewall settings stayed. The firewall settings were blocking a program from accessing the internet. The program runs as a process to check the validity of the Poser product key. (Poser can't start without it) THE SOLUTION I used the new installation of windows to compare to my old one. I reinstalled Windows Service Pack 2 and found the exceptions list for the SP2 firewall. I put Poser in the list and the firewall does not block the liscense server. NOW POSER STARTS. Yay. Now I can ditch my new install of Windows. But you were right. I had my settings too high for the firewall. I didn't get the message saying Poser was blocked because I turned the service that sends the message OFF. (duh) Too much tweakin. Thanks for your advice.

Thank you for all your help. I was FINALLY able to get it working on another installation of windows. Kind of a pain, but it will have to do until I figure out what is comflicting on this OS.

Yes I meant Windows Service Pack 2. I didn't think that was the problem, it was just one of the things that changd since Poser stopped working. I have gone through and uninstalled everything I installed since Poser stopped working, and still couldnt get it to work. I am getting DSL hooked up tommorow to see if changing to cable was the problem. I am thinking of just installing another copy of windows on drive D: and installing Poser 5 on it. This way there couldnt possible be anything with my current OS configuration that is conflicting with Poser. I honestly feel that I have tried everything to fix Poser. I even cleaned house in the registry to remove traces of old spyware and problematic programs. I found a nice peice of adware (saie.exe) that causes serious problems. I removed every last trace of it and Poser still won't work. Oh well, if Poser doesn't run on a seperate operating system, I will know there is a hardware restriction. I was thinking of building a new computer anyways. Maybe this is the push I need.

I do have a small wireless network with 2 laptops hooked up to them, but nothing has changed. Same equipment, computers etc. As for my hardware and software setup: Windows XP pro, p4 3.2, Gigabyte 8IK1100, 2 gigs of ram, Radeon x800, Norton internet security and anti-virus. You mentioned a printer being the culprit in your case, I have a HP psc 2410 that is still connected. Many things have changed since i last used poser. I have switched internet providers from SBC DSL to Comcast, but my computer wouldnt know that because of our Netgear firewall router. I did install the comcast software but promptly removed it because it had spyware with it. The reason we switched ISPs was because my GF and I recently moved. I dont see how that would make a difference to poser though. I also finally decided to take the plunge and download SP2. I held out for a while but i figured by now it must be safe. I have already tried uninstalling it to see if poser would work then , but to no effect. I have all the latest versions or updates on my software and drivers, and run a clean system normally. I am constantly screening for spyware and viruses, and run only the programs i need. I am not one of those people with like 20 icons in the bottom right of their taskbar. I have 3 at start-up. The fact that I can't get Poser to run on such a clean system drives me crazy.

Yes I have the latest 4.0.1 SR. I ended up getting ahold of techsupport at curious labs, but got their usual uninstall and reinstall advice. I was able to turn-off, actually prevent norton from starting to see if it was the culprit, but poser still won't run. I configured my computer to run with only what it needed, and disabled all services that werent microsoft. That didn't work. Then I did the exact opposite, and turned everything on in case poser relied on another program, and that didn't work either.

I have the same problem. I cant get my poser 5 to work. I tried reinstalling, scan disk, defrag, closing services, turning on services, shutting down norton AV ( although I can only disable it. It wont shut down when i tell it to from the task manager- just freezes) I have emailed curious labs, never got a reply. I am really stuck guys. Any ideas would be very helpful. Thank you in advance. Kevin

thank you clintH and stacey. You were both very helpful. I found my new favorite site.

my download is also not available, although i paid with paypal