i hadnt thought of that...and it probably wont tell me if i have run out of space..i do remember when i went to render the project, just to check it out, i hit render and nothing happened, i had all my animation settings as usual, but nothing happened...and when i set it to batch render the file itself it rendered it the way id originally saved it...hmmm..that gives me something to check into... these computers at work are p4 1.4 with 256 megs of memory and 2 hard drives a 12 gig and a 7 gig...we're still trying to convince them that the computers we need in the graphics area need to be more powerful than the ones they use to run word and excel...sigh... thanks...