I have been pouring over some of my old graphic software books, and I finally found a possible suggestion. “When a software program consistently crashes and the system and other applications do not, then reduce the system resources.” In this case that would mean reduce your screen resolution and color from 24, 32, or 48 bit to 16 bit at 1024 x 768 or lower. 

 

Previously, I have not been able to use Subsurface Scattering without a major memory leak and system crash, no matter what Vue Preferences, Video Drivers, or OS I used. 

 

So I ran a test; I reset all of the Vue defaults, reduced the screen color to Medium 16,000 colors, or 16 bit.  During the test, my memory usage stayed between 45 to 47 percent usage, while Rendering a 1024 x 435, 300 dpi Vue image to Screen in Final. The Render  was successful and only took 25 minutes, nomally memory usage would have gone to 98% and the system crashed within 3 minutes.  

My system requires 32 to 36% resources for Vista x64 to operate, and Vue only topped out at 47% this time.

 

I do not know if this will work for anyone else, but it is certainly worth a try, instead of unchecking all of the options, and crippling the software.

 

NOTE: 
I did not try any Poser figures during this test. 
I have not updated with the newest patch. 
I am using the final Retail build. 
AND, I have reinstalled the NVidia 158.1 drivers.

jankeen.com

Well, it is similar to the old advice to switch off OpenGL for Vue in cases like you describe. But if it works, cool! This is what counts.

One day your ship comes in - but you're at the airport.

Problem is that in 16 bit colours, you probably have banding in the sky, because there aren't enough colours to create a smooth gradient.

But that is only a preview display problem Bruno, not one for rendering. Just to avoid worries from unexperienced users that maybe then are firhgtened that their results could suffer.

One day your ship comes in - but you're at the airport.

Oh, you mean that Vue will still render at a high resolution, while only the display will be 16bits? Didn't know this. Thanks.