Hello, I just upgraded my PC to WinXP. Now when I run Poser 4 with the latest patch(it was already on the PC before WinXP) after it loads the lighting controls have disappeared... Anyone have any idea what happened? I can't seem to figure out what went wrong. Or how to fix it...

Don't know the answer but I too have been having XP problems. Ceratin lighting setups will cause my PC to spontaneously reboot at the end of a render. I do belive it's any setup with more than one light with the shadow map set to 1024 or above.

mmm.... no problems here... but i installed poser AFTER XP was pre-installed on this new machine... (And I don't use a lot of lighting, since I'm just learning how to use the prog lol) so I guess the problems should be in the lighting...

Do you mean the actual Light Controls globe in the workspace has disappeared? Try selecting General Preferences from the Edit menu. Choose Launch to Factory State, click OK, then shut down Poser and relaunch.

I haven't had any troubles with poser and xp at all.. but Im the same as b16a1, poser was installed after xp which came preloaded on my laptop..

Impudicus Rex: Your problem sounds like a memory issue. In theory no program, how buggy it may be, should be able to reboot XP except through the proper API calls. Since increasing shadow map size increases memory usage of Poser, you might want to check if your RAM is OK or if there's a problem with your systems VM settings.

One other thing to check is to make sure you've got the latest drivers for your video card. Microsoft DID NOT test all video drivers with XP prior to releasing XP. I had the same problem and it turned out that the video drivers for the ATi Radeon card included with XP were the problem. I went to ATi's website and found they had new drivers for XP posted. I donwloaded and installed them and the problem went away. XP WILL initiate a reboot if the system is using a "bad" video driver. Microsoft has recognized the bug in the kernel source code and is planning to include a fix in Service Release/Pack 1, due out this spring.

I had video driver problems as well. My new computer would reboot all of a sudden, mainly when rendering. I got the newest drivers for my nVidia video card, and no problems since.

Ah ha! I have a nVida Geforce with a crazy amount of RAM! Driver updates it is! Thanks :)

Yeah, the globe controls are gone and nothing I tried has brought them back... Including launch to factory state. :(

have poser and xp without any problems.Poser was installed before i updated from win98 to xp.

Can I just back up what ron said. I work in electrical retail and this is feedback from computer customers: If upgrading to XP, do not use the simple upgrade option and attempt to keep FAT32. Bite the bullet, wipe the hard drive and do a clean install using the XP (actually the NT) file system. This way you get all the security goodies, a more stable system, and as ron said, you are forced to find the latest drivers. A lot of work, yes, but worth it in the long run.

Well, I got it back... Don't know why, but I had tried that compatibility thing before and it didn't work. Tried it again and then it came back. I then set it to no compat mode and it still works so I'm happy. Yeah, I had to get drivers for my printer, scanner, video card, sound card,graphics tablet, CDRW software update, lost my norton system works, and had to update windows itself with about 25-30 megs... My connection is slightly less than 28.8 so it's been a pain, but things seem pretty good now. :) Thanks for all the input!

From experience I know what might have caused your problem, Impudicus Rex. In my case, and about 90% of the cases that a computer reboots spontaniously, it's the power supply. It just can't handle all the power needed. Companies just put in a power supply that is too light for the job, because of the simple fact that a lighter power supply is cheaper. With all the things attached to a computer, like webcam, graphic tablet etc. the power supply is just too short on supplying the power needed. And especially when you render a computer eats up a lot of watts. Also a lot of people don't know this, but if you upgrade your internal memory or put in a faster processor it means it's heavier on the power supply. In fact, there's still no virus known and no program that will just reboot your computer just like that. It will always give you a blue screen or whatever first before shutting it down or rebooting it. There's one virus that will shut your computer down, but that means it will never start up again... at least not with the programs you had on your HD. I had the same problem and bought myself a heavier power supply (400 watts now), installed it and ever since no spontanious reboot of the computer. Went through a lot of trouble before discovering what it was. Later I went to forums with specialists on that subject and they did tell me the same thing, although it was already taken care of. Just check how many watts your power supply is now and go out and buy yourself a heavier one or see if you can borrow one and try first before buying. I'm sure it will help. Hope this will help you. Finest regards, Johnnie...

Thanks for the input, Johnnie. I bought a brand-spankin' new 300w power supply just before X-mas. I'm more inclined to believe it was the brand new drivers for my brand-new kick-ass nVidia board. Upon installing the latest nVidia drivers and not the ones that came with XP is about when the troubles started. Looking back I do remember XP warning me that "These drivers have not passed rigourous testing...blah blah blah". I though it was a pile `O crap and installed them anyway. I have since rolled back to the default XP drivers and I seem to be doing fine. Thank for all the suggestions, folks. :)~

Hi, Best thing to do is have all your kit, (or as much as will fit) plugged into the machine when you install it, (on NTFS, anything else is a waste of time) You're also advised against "upgrading" to NTFS from FAT32 as the upgrade app will create a riddiculously small cluster size... If you have all your kit installed XP will add what drivers it has, and ask you to got to MS to download new ones for the hardware it can't identify. Using uncertified drivers with XP is a bad idea as it can crash if you do. I installed poser after a clean re-install and I've had no problems, but I too downloaded the latest drivers from HP for my laptop. (a bad idea in some respects as it recked my DVD player software, the "upgrade" version sucks :) later jb