Ok, so I leave a P5 render going overnight. Nothing too heavey, 1 figure, 3 lights, 1000 by 1350 at 300 dpi and as it often does it gets half way and inexplicably locksup and forces me to 'end process' it, but I also happen to kill norton antivirus in the process and then rerender (I mean actually endprocess it so it's nolonger on the taskbar), this time it takes 10mins - has anyone else noticed this or is it just a freaky coincidence?

You shouldn`t have to leave a poser 5 render overnight (its not vue or bryce :) ) It sounds like the norton program is somehow affecting poser badly. My computer with poser 5 has no internet connection but I have heard that you have to let poser connect to the internet for it to work properly, maybe that is part of the problem or it could be that norton is blocking poser connecting and somehow slowing it down.

I just finished a very simple production render in P5, though the size was a bit big (for a poster at 300ppi): 5000x5000pixels. Setup was a simple V3 with skin, 10 lights (from which 7 spots) but no shadows, and that's it. P5 did not crash or freeze, but it took 5hours 37 minutes to render. Task commander showed that half the processor's force was used, and about half the memory (XPPro on PIV3GHz, 2GB DDRam) yet there is no way to do anything else while mrPoser is rendering. My guess: unadapted coding, not up to the demands we now force on the app. Also no internet connection and no virus scanner on the workhorse puter.

Xantor: If you use the material room a lot for water, reflections and displacment mapping rather than bump mapping then you will end up rendering over night ;P With a serious render in Vue I usually end up waiting 50 hours or so (P4 2.2 Ghz, 1gig ram) I honestly think norton is having a detrimental effect though - I plan to kill it before I load poser from now on just incase.

Shutting down Norton AV might be a good idea when rendering, but not such a good idea if the same computer has a full time internet connection. You'll be infected in 3.2 seconds or less. So, the advice should be if you have a full-time connection (and this is how I do it to protect myself): 1. Disconnect the internet connection (and any other connections such as LAN which may be indirectly internet connected). 2. Shut down NAV. 3. Go about your business 4. Restart system or NAV 5. Restore connection(s) Otherwise, you're just inviting virus attacks. With the nasty stuff going around these days, it is a constant seige which only appears to be mitigated because of the 200-ft thick titanium-steel embattlements in which we must take refuge...

I have Norton set so that it only runs when I start it up. I've just found it screws up too many of my other programs. It's a constant PITA.

I have not had any problems with worms or viruses, even though I have an "always on" broadband connection. I do keep Windows patched and updated, and Zone Alarm running at all times. I don't use Outlook, never open executables attached to e-mail, and I run Norton, Ad-Aware, etc., regularly to make sure everything's okay. So far, so good. ZA seems to keep out any net-spreading worms.

NAV is a royal PITA. Just updated to 2005 on both my work and server machines. It gave me bloody hell on the server - so I just disabled all of those nice auto-protect features - just the basics. It also has a problem with MS Word, which is what I use to create my PDF documentation. So, I have disabled that feature. If it weren't for the need to protect, I wouldn't go near it! ;) ZA is great! You'd think by now that every e-mail software would have a screen that says, to the effect, "Never Open Attachments - Never Click on a Link asking for Personal Information!!!!!', that forces you to acknowledge that you read and understood the message before you can actually use the software. People just don't get it and the viruses spread.

Fortunately I have a hardware firewall so unless I'm stupid enough to open a random attachment I should be fine (touch wood :P) I keep all my mails off my computer at yahoo so I don't have issues with attachements I can't remove. This isn't the first time I have noticed this apparent link. After a poser crash I usually end up with a message telling me norton's control centre is not responding, it can't just be a coincidence.

Aeneas: If your CPU is stuck at 50% during a render, I have to guess that your machine is using HyperThreading. Unfortunately, Poser does not thread out its instructions which leads to it only being able to utilize one of the two virtual processors. If you want Poser to use the entire chip as one processor, try shutting off hyperthreading in your BIOS. It is good to keep it on for when you are doing most things on your PC, so I would shut it off only when you are going to do a Poser render.

I had a similar problem Hawke until I did 2 things : I increased my virtual memory to 3 Gig as suggested by SVDL and I switch Nortons off while rendering. In all honesty though, the upping of the VM did the job by itself. The Nortons thing is just my idea that seems to make it more stable. Someone said something about Poser needing the internet. I'm never connected to the internet when I use Poser (5).

Thanks, DunjeonProductions: you hit the nail on the head. I also use Cinema4D, and I am used to surf the net ororganise stuff on my pc whilst Cinema is rendering. Or even go on working on another scene or material. Which is why I suppose Poser was not really made for the things we now use it for. Otoh: it did do the job and didn't crash, so I only complain about the lack of sleep. as for any app running better when connected to the net: I cannot believe this as it would mean that divided forces are stronger than united ones. Sp either this has to do with the Content Rom (that you can better eliminate asap) or with the fact that P5sr4 wants to check the network to see whether there are other versions of itself running. But when you uninstalled the Content Room and are not connected to a network, P5 runs like a freight train.

It's not just Poser 5. Poser 4 and PP also check the network to see if there are other versions running. If you block Poser from the net, it will keep trying repeatedly. This takes some system resources, and slows things down. If you let Poser do its checking, it will check once and stop, freeing up system resources.

Not sure how this works on a computer that is not connected to the net. Perhaps Poser doesn't detect any network if you're not connected?

I've never experienced any repeated connect attempts with P4. Before I set ZA to always allow it to connect, it would try once on launch and not after that, regardless of whether I let it through or not. As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter whether you allow it access or not but that's on dial-up with no network. I use the freeware Antivir AVS and havent experiencd any application conflicts. Norton seems to be a bit touchy.