I am having a problem with Poser 6 in the last few days. It shut itself down in the middle of a scene I was working on, and since then every time I try to start it, it shuts itself down immediately once it gets past the welcome screen. I've reinstalled and reinstalled the service pack, rebooted over and over, done a virus scan, everything I can think of, but it just won't start up! My machine has a decent video card, and I have 1.5GB of RAM, so I know it's not a memory issue. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Go to the folder where your "Poser.exe" sits and you'll see a "Poser.rsr" delete that or back it up and then reinstall, that fixed a similar problem for me a few times, once up and running back that file up...........Steve

Thank you, I will try that!

OK, that didn't work. I ended up uninstalling Poser, deleting my runtime and the whole Curious Labs folder, and reinstalling. That didn't work either.

Could this be some kind of driver conflict? I recently got a new monitor, and had to upgrade some drivers for that. That's the only thing on my system that's changed.

I got the same problem... try and check if it is EXACTLY the same (are You running WinXP?):

Run msconfig and perform a diagnostic boot (or press F8 at boot time to do the same... actually never tried this way, always used msconfig)

Run Poser... does it works? It does for me, which is just so queer...

The same results by just performing a selective boot without services and boot elements (the last two checkbox in the general tab), having just one of these unselected did not work... I didn't managed to determine the combination of services/elements that allows me to run Poser...

Of course I'd like Poser to run with a complete start up! So this is not the solution...

e-frontier says this could result from a problem with OpenGL (was it a FAQ?), but I did not changed drivers... (and why should the selective boot work, anyway?)

Also I tried deleting the Poser's preference files, of course no change...

I had a bad polipos virus infection... got through it thanks to McAfee's Stinger (just in time!)... I'm wondering if this has something to do with the behavoir... I read that some programs, though repaired, failed in passing CRC checks... I have reinstalled Poser since, so this should not be the case... but what if the licensing software (a 3rd party application I guess) was not touched by the reinstallation process and so left damaged on the HD?... hmmm... and yet why should work with a selective boot? Even if the licensing protocol requires some sevice/element then it should not work when this is disabled, it is surely not intended to...

Dunno... :(

Someone please help!!!

Ah!... I forgot to mention... I though I solved the problem by restoring a previous Windows configuration... until the next reboot :(...

No way I can redo this and try again since I started the fight against the polipos (that requires turning off the restore system, thus deleting all previous restore points)...

Did you install quicktime 7, if yes, uninstall and check if the prob is gone.

I just fixed a lot of problems in my pc by 1: cleaning it out with compressed air. Reseated Memory chips. 2: rebooting with the motherboard bios cd installed *my guess for success 3: resetting correct time (could not send email) Not sure which did the most. All had a dramatic effect. I had a series of similar problems including the crash upon opening event you mentioned.

Try also deleting all your preferences, and deleting the 'prefered scene pz3' - not in front of my Poser machine right now and don't recall the exact filename on that one. If these things fail, unintall, delete everything but your runtime, and edit your registry to remove all references to Poser / Curious Labs. Then reinstall. If that fails, go to an anti virus site that will do a scan from the wb and run it... See if you have a virus your own anti-virus software either doesn't know about or has been disabled and prevented from finding... One thing I also do is put windows on a separete physical harddrive from my commonly used applications. That way in a worst case scenerio I can reformat my windows drive without messing with my runtime.

@ Jules : Yep! I Did... Let me check this out... ...waiting... You know -- HUGE runtime......

 YEEEEAAAAAH!!!! That's it! It was Quicktime! Incredible!

THANK YOU! (hmmm... maybe turning off all QT stuff from loading at start up would do... don't know if I wanna check though ;^) )

Hope it's the same for Sflayer! (Thank You for starting this!)

How did You got to it, Jules?

Also thanks to Richardson and Arcady -- always important to get such tips (if I don't need them this time, maybe the next... I'm presently taking notes :)!!!)

I think I fixed mine too. I rolled back my video driver, and everything seems to be working! :)

I will see if it keeps working after I reinstall all my content. Thanks everyone for the advice and suggestions. I never knew so many things could interfere with programs starting.

No one should ever try to claim video board driver makers are not guilty of fixing bugs by adding new bugs... :)

@ Pinkus

It's a known bug in QT, may be my own memory worked well enough to remind me of that.

Crud. It wasn't the driver, and it IS quicktime.

Problem is, I can't run iTunes without Quicktime installed (stoopid Mac people, just as bad as Windows people with their integrated crap!) and I need iTunes to sync up my iPod.

So, is there any way to delete just the parts of Quicktime that aren't necessary for Itunes?

Eventually You could try the selective start up -- disable all services AND elements relating to iTune and QT and see if Poser starts normally. The point is there is a chance that when You need iTune and start it manually it'll load just what it needs. Could be the best compromise...

If I'm not wrong Poser has the ability to produce QT movies, so my guess is the problem arises because Poser looks for some QT stuff when it starts. If it's so the problem could be avoided if we prevent this (and we are not going to make QT movies!), whithout the need of uninstalling/disabling iTune+QT, the question is: can we?

Weird. I'll never figure out computers. #p' I had QT 7 installed. Still do.

If you have a pc, try deleting the file called ImageIO_Mac.mrw in the imageioplugins drawer in the runtime, you can`t make quicktime movies in the pc version of poser even with that plugin and it could be causing the problem.

Deleting that plugin makes folders in poser open slightly faster too.

Thank you for this! It seems to be working! If it keeps on working you are going to have to allow me to kiss your feet in gratitude. :-)

Don`t kiss my feet just send me large amounts of cash. :tongue2:

The plugin seems to be just left in poser because it is in the macintosh version, it only affects mov files and the pict ones, neither of these can be used in the pc version even with that plugin.