I have suddenly encountered incomplete renders from UF4.03 when carrying out renders at A3 size x 300ppi.  Up until yesterday these gave me no problems, and have come out perfectly.  I then did a couple of smaller renders, again with no problems, but since I went back to carry out the large renders again, the program appears to go through the whole process, but when I go to open up the BMP file, it is only partially done, the rest being black.  The last time I tried this particular render (5th time!) I finally got the blue screen of death.

I uninstalled UF, also did a defrag, then re-installed the program, and it is still doing this!  This is not an insufficient memory problem, and neither do I get any error message come up.

I have my window settings inside UF at 877x620, which then gives me the correct correlating ratio for A3 renders.

Can you help in any way with this?  I'm at my wits end to know what to do, and I just cannot imagine why the program is suddenly playing up like this?

Nicky,

What filesize are these .bmp's coming out at? and what should they be?

What happens if you try rendering to a .png file type? (without transparency info)

.png files are lossless image files and can be opened fine in PSP or PS - just the same as .bmp's can - and they are smaller in filesize, so there will be less problems with mapping memory when editing them if needed.

The only thing I can think of that will fix the crop of current problems with your computer is to do a complete format/reinstall of Windows and all of your fave apps from scratch... which I know you are wanting to avoid at all costs right now... sorry girlfriend - but I think it's just about time that you are going to have to seriously look into that option...

Big hugs!

T.

Well things got worse last night, as my computer just cut out twice, both whilst trying to render in UF!

This morning we hoovered it out!!!  There was a considerable amount of dust over the fans etc., and since we were told on a previous occasion that it was overheating due to excess dust (??????), we thought we'd give this a go ourselves as a preliminary attempt (so no-one can say it was dust and then charge us for it! lol!)

I then uninstalled several programs more recently installed, and came across something really wierd..  I had Squirls Water Reflections as a stand-alone programe on my drive, which I don't ever use.  OK, I thought I'd take that off, and it went through the uninstall process, but before finishing I was given the decision to make about certain associations this program had made elsewhere - namely, wait for it...  Ultra Fractal 3!!!  It was in quite a lot of places inside there, and as UF3 is the basic program upon which I downloaded the upgrades of UF 4.01 and then 4.03, I wondered if this just might be causing conflict!  For goodness sake, please no-one tell me it's an integral part of UF now!!!!  I mean it showed that the UF Server page was inside the Squirls Water Effects folder for goodness sake!!!  That was just one thing...

Then I took T's advice and rendered the image as a png file.  It worked.    And of course, instead of about 50MB filesize, it's about half!  And yet this wasn't one of my fractals that took many hours to render, it only took 50 mins in all - same as it told me it would take as a BMP.

At least I have achieved the render I need for this particular image, so we'll have to see what happens next!  I am backing up everything I want to keep as I go along at the moment, as I am indeed preparing for a reformat to be carried out sometime soon should the problems persist!

As for needing to hoover it out, I've worked with computers 15 years old in horrendously dirtly conditions and have never heard of them needing hoovering out before!  Makes my home sound filthy doesn't it?  But I can assure you, it's very clean, and hubby's computer has worked fine for years in this particular room...

It sounds like we are making a bit of progress here Nicky... lets see if you have indeed fixed at least part of the problem.

Don't be ashamed of the dust... you should see my filthy machine... I think I'll clean mine out today too... lol!

T.

So it's been hopefully a happy hoovering day! lol!

Hahaha! Not likely!

I have to take the biggest dog to the vet for an x-ray in an hour, and then I have to mow the lawn so we can find the dog "leavings" (and the dogs)...

I should also take the youngest pup to obedience training, do some shopping, and maybe even find some time to scratch myself somewhere along the way... errr!

Maybe I'll mow the lawn after I've taken the pup to training... gotta love daylight savings time... lol!

Tomorrow, I get to pickup a PC from a customer's place and bring it back here to swap out the hard drive and any other parts she's killed - and then go over to another customer's place and sort out their PC problems... I think I'll go to work on Monday for a bit of quiet time... lol!

T.

That's one busy life you're leading - and where's your time to create new fractals these days?  That's the trouble when you have to earn a living unfortunately!

My UF is working very slowly today!  I mean it's taking simply ages for each image to appear on the screen but maybe that's just because I cleared out the UF cache - just thinking out loud...

Not too many doggies do-do's I hope!  Hope the x-ray went ok and that whatever it was for shows that things are going to be ok...

The xray of poor Connor's foot showed something we weren't quite expecting... he has broken his metatarsal bone. This means that whatever was happening inside that bone on the last xray a few weeks ago has degraded the bone to such an extent that it has snapped in half. Funny thing is that he's not even showing any signs of pain when walking... go figure!

At this point, our vet is going to talk to a specialist about our options - but judging from the condition of that bone - it looks like the fastest and least intrusive option is going to be amputation of that bone and the toe below it. I'm not going to put my dog through a biopsy, then a bone graft operation that may or may not work... the bone probably won't take a graft considering the thinness of the walls on it anyways - and I'm not about to let some gung-ho vet surgeon experiment on my baby.

Apart from that - my boy is in great health... lol!

Finding time to make my art? That isn't so easy right now - but I did have a fiddle with Apo yesterday - some promising results, but nothing worth uploading... lol!

T.

Quote - Well things got worse last night, as my computer just cut out twice, both whilst trying to render in UF!

This morning we hoovered it out!!!  There was a considerable amount of dust over the fans etc., and since we were told on a previous occasion that it was overheating due to excess dust (??????), we thought we'd give this a go ourselves as a preliminary attempt (so no-one can say it was dust and then charge us for it! lol!)

I then uninstalled several programs more recently installed, and came across something really wierd..  I had Squirls Water Reflections as a stand-alone programe on my drive, which I don't ever use.  OK, I thought I'd take that off, and it went through the uninstall process, but before finishing I was given the decision to make about certain associations this program had made elsewhere - namely, wait for it...  Ultra Fractal 3!!!  It was in quite a lot of places inside there, and as UF3 is the basic program upon which I downloaded the upgrades of UF 4.01 and then 4.03, I wondered if this just might be causing conflict!  For goodness sake, please no-one tell me it's an integral part of UF now!!!!  I mean it showed that the UF Server page was inside the Squirls Water Effects folder for goodness sake!!!  That was just one thing...

Then I took T's advice and rendered the image as a png file.  It worked.    And of course, instead of about 50MB filesize, it's about half!  And yet this wasn't one of my fractals that took many hours to render, it only took 50 mins in all - same as it told me it would take as a BMP.

At least I have achieved the render I need for this particular image, so we'll have to see what happens next!  I am backing up everything I want to keep as I go along at the moment, as I am indeed preparing for a reformat to be carried out sometime soon should the problems persist!

As for needing to hoover it out, I've worked with computers 15 years old in horrendously dirtly conditions and have never heard of them needing hoovering out before!  Makes my home sound filthy doesn't it?  But I can assure you, it's very clean, and hubby's computer has worked fine for years in this particular room...

The files being in the wrong place could be a "Registry" issue. The Windows Registry keeps track of where files should be....There are some registry repair programs that may help.