Frustrated with increasing behavioral glitches, I uninstalled Poser 6 a few days ago. I plan on re-installing tonight. As I recall, last time around I installed the base app first, then SR2, without having installed SR1 first. Does anyone know if this matters? I still have SR1 saved. Should I install it, then SR2, or may I simply install base app > SR2 without bothering with SR1? Thanks for any authoritative clarification, if you can offer it. :-)

By the way, the "glitches" I'd referred to are that Poser doesn't want to complete rendering of scenes. It gets about halfway through, then just quits rendering, as if finished. The app doesn't hang or freeze, it simply stops rendering. I suspected a memory problem, but have run diagnostics including MemTest ... there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with RAM (I have 1GB, with virtual memory distributed between two drives.) I'm hoping that some Poser-specific file had become corrupted, and that a fresh install will take care of the problem. I don't experience anything like this in other apps including DAZ Studio and Vue d'Esprit. If anyone knows causes of this behavior, I'd really appreciate some enlightenment.

This is just a thought, but just a couple of threads ago I posted with kind of a similar issue. Poser had started persistently locking up on me during rendering, but once or twice it also did the thing you mentioned: 'It gets about halfway through, then just quits rendering, as if finished. The app doesn't hang or freeze, it simply stops rendering.' The answer for me was to de-dust the inside of my PC. Outside I keep it clean on a regular basis, but I just hadn't appreciated how choked it was getting inside. Just a possibility. BTW, I don't think it does matter to install SR1. The info at the CP download area seems to suggest that SR2 is all that's required.

sr1 is not required. if sr1 was still required it would still be avaiable for download from E-F.

carodan, I appreciate the suggestion, and was actually thinking the same thing. I KNOW the inside of my computer is incredibly dusty ... perhaps the memory DIMM contacts are affected. Cleaning it can't hurt. :-) This problem has me perplexed, as Poser never "choked" on complex renders when I was using 1/4 my current memory. Thanks for the responses regarding SR1. I didn't think it mattered but wanted to be sure prior to installation. I'm crossing my fingers. :-)

De-dusting sounds a very good idea, because I wonder if your machine is overheating. Poser increases CPU load and temperature very considerably during a render, and that might explain why you're getting these problems. Also check that all the fans are working okay.

Right, you just have to install SR2 and you're done. About dedusting the pc: Good idea, because dust may overheat it. A new fan solved a lot of problems for me too, together with freeing more space on both, the drive where poser resides and the harddrive that contains the swapfile and the rendercache.
Another tip may be to use pagedefrag because Poser is able to make kind of puree of your pagefile. When used the first time it may cause a real long start-up-time but after it's finished you hopefully get a faster system.

Last suggestion is using the area-render tool, it saved me a lot of large-formated renders that shut down like yours when doing them in a whole.

Big thanks for the excellent suggestions, all. SaintFox, are you suggesting using the area-render tool for the entire rendered region, or just to render the parts that are neglected when P6 halts prematurely? I hadn't considered that work-around ... cool idea.

Best way is to choose the area-render from beginning. There seems to be a strange behaviour of poser that when it once stopped rendering it sometimes refuses to do an area render (or worse... I had errors like loosing all textures, memory errors, loosing lights and such). Choosing "reuse shadow maps" after rendering the first part can be a real time saver, too. If you check it before rendering the first part you may "re-use" an older shadowmap (from another image). If you render over plain colored background like I often do you may render just the parts that contain figures/geometries. Sometimes you get nasty lines between the areas. To get rid of them you can save every single part and get them together with cutting and pasting in your graphic-program (it's easy because all area renders have the same size - areas not rendered contain the background or previous rendered parts). By the way: Sorry for repeating some things, I forgot to send my posting first, so others where faster with their reply ;o)

Attached Link: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html

Hi SaintFox - tried your link and got "Page not found" Googled for "pagedefrag" and got the link above. Is it the same app? I just want to be careful..:-)) Cheers, Diolma

Attached Link: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/maxmem.htm

Exactly, that's what I meant. Funny, I've copied the link directly from a download-site but obviously I did something wrong. Thanks a lot for finding a working link! By the way: It's a mighty tool, not so hard to set up (and you only have to do this once) but it's important to read the directions closely.

Another thing that some of you may find useful is Maxmem, it is a memory manager and best with it that you can start it when you need it and turn it off if you want to. Here is the(hopefully correct) link: MaxMem

OkeyDoke - got 'em both now (thx SaintFox)... (Oh, and BOTH your links in post 11 work..) Cheers, Diolma

LOL - I'm such a newbie with posting here. Seems I have only two options: Adding the link once (not working) or adding it twice (both working). Sorry... but I'm glad I could be helpful with my link-chaos!