When I'm doing something that requires the preview window to update (I think that's the trigger, anyway) Poser 7 sometimes becomes temporarily unresponsive. The floating windows (preview, dials, library, hierarchy and animation palettes) 'white out'. The condition resolves itself after a second or two, but it's mighty frustrating when I'm trying to adjust something.

Sometimes when this happens, another window that was open behind the Poser one is brought to the front - and I can only switch back to Poser by clicking on its title bar or the taskbar button, or doing Alt-Tab. Just clicking elsewhere in the poser window doesn't change focus, although dials and so on still seem to work. If I deliberately switch to another window, this doesn't happen; I can click anywhere in the Poser window to switch back to it.

I never had this problem on XP. As far as I can remember Poser 7 originally worked fine under Windows 7, too, which might suggest a video driver issue. However I get the same thing on two very different machines. I use the Sreed preview, but I see the same effect under OpenGL.

Poser 6 shows more or less the same issue, except that so far I haven't been able to get
another window to come to the front.

A fresh install of Poser 7 shows the same behaviour.

Any ideas?

Check the event logs. It sounds like the video driver may be crashing, then recovering.

There have been a few updates to Windows that can affect older drivers.

Can't think of anything else it might be.

Make sure Abode Air is updated and Abode Flash. I notice that same thing happening when I have a browser window open that has some heavy flash element running.

Quote - Check the event logs. It sounds like the video driver may be crashing, then recovering.

That was my first thought - but I get the same problem on two PCs with wildly different video systems. I can see nothing on the event logs. Thanks for the input anyway!

  > Quote - Make sure Abode Air is updated and Abode Flash. I notice that same thing happening when I have a browser window open that has some heavy flash element running.

I don't use Flash, or Air. I have noticed some applications can interfere when run at the same time as Poser - VLC is (or was) one. However I get these symptoms even when there's nothing else running apart from system processes. Again, thanks for the suggestion!

Hope it helps :) I found the library (unless you are using something like Dimension3d's library helper) seems to use Adobe Air. On the possible conflicts, even though Adobe Flash is kind of needed for many sites, this newest version seems to be... buggy. I notice on tabbed browsing with websites that have many flash elements (or links to youtube videos) a giant amount of resourses being used and causing lag.

I do use the Open GL myself. Also depending on your video card software you might poke around the settings.... maybe...

It did help, because you got me thinking about things that try to update the display while Poser is running. It turns out that the culprit was Microsoft's Resource Monitor, which I've  been running recently to monitor render slow-downs. Ironic, huh? The diagnostic tool causes a collateral problem. :)

I tried other things such as the VLC Media player than I mentioned above, and also a YouTube video playing in Chrome (the only way I can watch cat videos on either of my machines, neither of which have stand-alone Flash installed). Neither of these things caused any problems, even running simultaneously.

Incidentally, remember that I'm referring to Poser 7 here. The browser-based library interface didn't come in until Poser 8, as far as I know.

I did try OpenGL, and it was better in some respects; but handling of transparency was not always sensible. I don't think Poser 7's preview rendering is very good anyway, so I'm not sure there's much to gain by tinkering with video settings; but I'll have a play some time when I'm bored. ;)

A good tip is a product made by Microsoft called Process Explorer. A company named Sysinternals made it and they got purchased by Microsoft some years ago. It's available on Microsoft's Technet website. Google for it and grab it from the technet dot microsoft website. You'll find it will monitor resources and can be super helpful for diagnosing problems (much better than the built in resource monitor). Later versions of the resource monitor (shipped with other versions of the OS) incorporate many of Process Explorer's features. It's also a great way to keep track of items and possibly catch when something bad is happening.  As soon I start my pc I start and run Process Explorer all the time.

Another tip is a program called Autoruns (by Sysinternals and hosted on the same Microsoft website). It's a way of looking and editing the registry without actually diving into the registry by hand. Instead of deleting registry keys, you can use Autoruns to turn off and on many keys (things normally under start up and delete missing key files).  Spybot Search and Destroy, and Malwarebytes use similar tools but Autoruns is a fantastic low resource addition.

VLC is fantastic :)

Yeah, I've been using the Sysinternals stuff since they were called Sysinternals. I just liked the way I could filter the Resource Monitor display to show me stuff related to a selected process or processes.

It seems that as long as I minimise the window (therefore no display updates) I can leave Resource Monitor running and it doesn't interfere. I only consult it during rendering, or if something goes wrong anyway.

If you press Ctrl L on the process explorer it opens a split window that shows more info about the specific dependencies (though don't leave that running all the time, Ctrl L will shut it). Also if you choose View Columns you can add tons more information in the display :) I usually run with the company and path (showing location) in addition to the normal.