Actually, it was hosing Poser 2012 and Poser 2014. Practically every Tuesday night. Tuesdays are Microsoft Update days.
By Wednesday afternoon, people were howling that Poser immediately crashed on startup.
Strange - I have been using Win10 since the early beta-testing days, and I had absolutely no issues with Poser Pro 2014, and now Poser Pro 11. I am using both in a Win10 x64 machine, and performance is actually a little better. Conversely, I see complaints about Poser often crashing in some forums, but that doesn't happen to me either. I remember Poser 4 and 6 were KINGS of crashes, but I use PP2014 and PP11 almost everyday for HOURS, and no crashes.
I remember that before Poser finally got a memory management in version 7 (I think it was 7, or maybe 8), lack of enough RAM was the major cause for crashes. It's easy to forget that 3D software are usually memory hogs. I saw people running Poser on a WinXP laptop with only 2GB RAM, loading a 3GB scene and then blaming it was Poser's fault when WinXP cannot handle more than 2GB memory at once before resorting to virtual memory, and most likely crash. I have also seen people adding 4GB RAM to a laptop running a 32-bits Win7, which on its own can only handle up to 2GB - and then complaining that Poser crashes. Half the memory will never be used. My sister-in-law has a laptop doing exactly that: 6GB RAM on a 32-bits Windows 8, so 4 of the 6GB RAM will *never* be used. Windows will reserve about 800MB RAM for internal use, she only actually have a little more than 1GB free, no matter how much memory is physically installed. The opposite can also happen - the OS is 64-bits, but people install 32-bits Poser, which on its turn can only use up to 2GB RAM, no matter how much memory is available.
Another common cause for crashes is video card driver compatibility with OpenGL. Both Poser and DS use OpenGL on the previews. Some video cards have compatibility issues with some 3D software, and I remember some of the ones I had (8800GT, GTX275 and GTX470) caused trouble with Poser. Windows updates can cause compatibility issues with some video card drivers, and that can indirectly cause Poser/DS to crash. This is typically resolved with video card driver updates, but I remember ATI cards having OpenGL driver issues that they just couldn't fix. I have switched to nVidia cards, and had no more issues with the GTX580 and now the GTX980Ti. I imagine OpenGL driver for motherboard embedded video cards can be quite unpredictable, since these chipsets get way less driver updates than dedicated video adapters.
Even though Poser/DS are a popular tools, they are 3D programs that require some hardware muscle. The least people can do is add more memory to keep things more stable. If you are running with 4GB, that's the bare minimum, where some bigger scenes can take Poser or DS down with possible crashes. There was a prop from Stonemason that could take 3GB RAM on its own because of the amount of textures loaded into memory, and that was just ONE prop. Loading that on a 4GB computer will most likely cause a crash. Even 3DS MAX tends to crash if it runs out of memory. It's the nature of 3D software. They are memory hogs. Get more memory and make sure your OS *and* software are both 64-bits. If one of them is 32-bits, more memory would have no effect because it would never be used.
How much RAM is enough? With 3D it's never enough, but 6 to 8GB is less prone to crashes than 4GB. My old PC had 12GB RAM, and my current one has 16GB. You will notice that Windows also runs smoothly with more RAM, and memory is cheaper nowadays.
