This is a strange one i've not had before...

Carrara's been acting up, simply exiting to desktop without warning while in a mid-render. Its not even bothering with the Memory Allocation Error messages anymore. I did a fresh reboot, emptied the DazTmp folder after every crash, C6's Disk Spool set at 200mb,  exited my Antivirus & firewall apps, and any other process that wasn't required, in result Windows & system Memory usage at 268mb...

Now, this particular scene, I was able by fluke - get a 1680x1050 render but it was in avi format frame 1 / 96... but after that, I could nolonger get anything more than 840x525 without crashing. Believe me, I've had way more populated & resource intensive scenes done before at full resolution...

The scene setup in the assembly room: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Glitchscenesetup.jpg

The Render artifacts / Progress Statistics Tab:
Notice the 2 render tiles (@ 128) where i'm getting some digital  garbage in those  tiles. Total surface area size 1.71gb  i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Glitchtab3.jpg

Looks like i goofed up on the other screenshot, overwrote it... Was going to paste one with system temps.  

AA Good
Accuracy 2 Pixels
Shadow Accuracy 2 pixels

Global Illumination:
Sky 100%
Indirect Lighting 100%
Interpolation 20%
Photons 5000
Photon accuracy 10%
Lighting quality: fast
Accuracy 16px
Tiles: 128

Basic System Setup:
Core2Quad Q6600
Thermalrite Ultra120 Extreme Heatsink / 120mm Panaflow fan
2gb Ram, XP Pro
Coolermaster 620HX PSU, CM Stacker 800 case
Carrara 6.2.1

CPU temps - range for all 4 cores via CPUID Hardware Monitor
Min 39C  (102F),  Current 40C (103F) - 42C (107F),  Max 54C (129F)

Final render: "Maximum Ninja: 820x525, indirect light 140%, Tile size 32: www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Very strange, but theres a lot of objects that isnt in use. The final render we cant see almost all those buildingd. To dont get a lot of memory used, delete those that dont show and dont project shadows in the scene. Maybe this can help a lot.
Other questions that one that need to be done everytime: did you cleaned the unused objects and shaders???

yeah, I've seen that.  it may be due to no free ram or full disk.  yer render settings are rock-bottom (defaults), so it ain't that. so many scene elements to load, but only rendering a small fraction of the surfaces.  they have tricks to deal with that in the cinema biz. is "full raytracing" checked?

Some other programs, if run first on the computer after startup, do not let go of the memory they have cached, even though they are closed. Could this be part of the problem?
Another place to check: try going into preferences and reducing the number of changes saved for backing out of boo-boos. A big scene requires lots of  memory for each backup.

Quote -

The Render artifacts / Progress Statistics Tab:
Notice the 2 render tiles (@ 128) where i'm getting some digital  garbage in those  tiles. Total surface area size 1.71gb i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Glitchtab3.jpg

When saving the render into a jpg file, do you still get the artifacts?
That may help to identify either a problem within your video card or a Carrara's rendering issue...

Quote - This is a strange one i've not had before...

Carrara's been acting up, simply exiting to desktop without warning while in a mid-render. Its not even bothering with the Memory Allocation Error messages anymore. I did a fresh reboot, emptied the DazTmp folder after every crash, C6's Disk Spool set at 200mb,  exited my Antivirus & firewall apps, and any other process that wasn't required, in result Windows & system Memory usage at 268mb...

Now, this particular scene, I was able by fluke - get a 1680x1050 render but it was in avi format frame 1 / 96... but after that, I could nolonger get anything more than 840x525 without crashing. Believe me, I've had way more populated & resource intensive scenes done before at full resolution...

The scene setup in the assembly room: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Glitchscenesetup.jpg

The Render artifacts / Progress Statistics Tab:
Notice the 2 render tiles (@ 128) where i'm getting some digital  garbage in those  tiles. Total surface area size 1.71gb  i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Glitchtab3.jpg

Looks like i goofed up on the other screenshot, overwrote it... Was going to paste one with system temps.  

AA Good
Accuracy 2 Pixels
Shadow Accuracy 2 pixels

Global Illumination:
Sky 100%
Indirect Lighting 100%
Interpolation 20%
Photons 5000
Photon accuracy 10%
Lighting quality: fast
Accuracy 16px
Tiles: 128

Basic System Setup:
Core2Quad Q6600
Thermalrite Ultra120 Extreme Heatsink / 120mm Panaflow fan
2gb Ram, XP Pro
Coolermaster 620HX PSU, CM Stacker 800 case
Carrara 6.2.1

CPU temps - range for all 4 cores via CPUID Hardware Monitor
Min 39C  (102F),  Current 40C (103F) - 42C (107F),  Max 54C (129F)

Final render: "Maximum Ninja: 820x525, indirect light 140%, Tile size 32: www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Your memory is very skimpy, Windows uses at least 600mb-that doesn't leave much for Carrara.
I tested a scene for a forum member at Daz, it was only about 500mb when loaded, but Carrara used 2.3gb on my Windows XP 64 with LAA enabled and 8gb memory, when loading it and then went back down to 500mb. It looks like carrara can use a lot of memory to do all of its internal things.

Yes it uses, that why I talked to remove unused object in the scene... if the camera dont see them and no shadow are projected from them, so delte it! It will no count in the render time, but will get a lot of memory for the openGL display.

GKDantas: Very strange, but theres a lot of objects that isnt in use. The final render we cant see almost all those buildingd. To dont get a lot of memory used, delete those that dont show and dont project shadows in the scene. Maybe this can help a lot.
Other questions that one that need to be done everytime: did you cleaned the unused objects and shaders???

The truck's front bumper shows the default Carrara ground plane & sky reflection if theres no street of buildings. infront. I think its Dull Steel procedural shader thats for the bumper, suppose I can change it to Lead...  

Additionally, I duplicated extra buildings of the same, so they're all using the same texture instance, vs where you'd normally see Wall, Wall1, Wall 2, etc

Even for V4's Darcy skin texture, I saved the torso, head, and limbs to my shaders, deleted the duplicates loaded under new names in the list and applied the single torso where relevant, and did the same for the face and limbs body parts. That Alone always is a major resource saver. When I have multiple V3's or V4's, I usually use the 1 skin set on the same generation of figures. In my Rendo Gallery, Sisters was done that exact say, 4 x v3 = 1xv3 skin texture loaded in the scene. Same with Dystopia city blocks I use.

And always, I constantly Remove Unused Objects and Shaders after running those optimizations.

Also, the Daz3d pickuptruck by Serrge - 50% of it is my own handmade procedural shaders for the body and wheels. Then theres Carrara's own Glass, chrome and Dull Steel used for the windshield, bumper and mirror + door handles. Also, Light through Transparency and Caustics are enabled as render options, as the truck's windshield is using the glass shader. Only the truck's and bike's windshields are using the glass shader.

The Ninja is 99% procedural shaders also, only some some stock leather texture used for the seat. the Black paint is my own experiment, bit of gloss and reflectivity. Might still need a bit of work.

Miss Nancy: Yes, raytracing was also checked in the render.

Sueposer: I havn't tried reducing the level of Undo's. Although I always close Carrara, empty the DazTmp and do a fresh reboot and processes trimming before loading up Carrara to make the render.

holyforest: Yes, I saved the render as an image, just incase its a GUI & graphics card / driver display glitch. The artifacts show up in the saved document which i'll attach right below: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/Ninja1scenetest2840glitch.jpg

aquiavic: With all due respect, I realize 2gb is fairly low and I'm still using Xp Pro 32bit, and 2gb is the max my motherboard can use, hence any and all optimizations I perform are by neccessity. A new motherboard and a nice 8 - 16gb ram kit is something I can't afford yet,

"Windows uses at least 600mb-that doesn't leave much for Carrara."
Right and Wrong / yes and no.

By default Windows XP with Service Pack3 chews up around ~500 - 600mb of ram with all its eye candy enabled, and no optimizations and tweaking of any kind - and thats on a fresh boot.  Vista is even a worse culprit, I've seen chew up 700-900mb on a fresh boot before getting tweaked out and geared for efficient & minimal usage of resources.

Now, just so everyone's on the same page here, I've done a fresh boot, unloaded all excess programs from running, and taken a screenshot. In addition, I'm also providing a screenshot of my entire Services settings, showing you whats enabled, disabled, auto, manual, and currently running.

I kid you not, these optimizations only makes windows chew up ~260mb out of the entire 2gb. Thats effectively 1.74gb free for Carrara to use + windows swapfile. That includes unloading Kaspersky, my A/V and firewall, in which upon the boot process I unplug the network cable from the machine

Its the only way I can do some of the renders I've done sofar.

Checkout these heavy windows optimizations:
Task Manager: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/OptimizedProcesses.jpg

Optimized Windows Services page1: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/OptimizedServices1.jpg

Optimized Services page2: i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq129/TerrasJadeonar/Glitches%20and%20Issues/OptimizedServices2.jpg

Additional info:

System Properties:
Advanced Tab -> Performance Options -> Visual Effects tab:

• Show Shadows under mouse pointer: Enabled
• Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop

Advanced Tab -> Performance Options -> Advanced tab:

• Virtual Memory: Custom Size: (Static page files)
  Drive:  Initial - Max
  C: 4096 - 4096
  D: 4096 - 4096
  E: 4096 - 4096

WIndows Startup items and System Tray: 
"Start Menu -> Run -> msconfig -> Startup tab"
Such culprits like Adobe Acrobat, Quicktime player, MS Office helpers, NeroCheck, etc are also trimmed out soon as those apps are installed and show up on next reboot. I find those particularly offensive, as those alone can suck down resources and performance being loaded and waiting for use. Just the bare essentials like

Suffice to say, I build and upgrade my own systems, keep them running optimally.  If I was even more frugal with the windows services, all network services would also be gone from startup, though its a pia to constantly trim that handful of services out and restore them later.

Only excess fat I could think of still existing on this machine would be the bitrock installer registry entries that have been accumulating over time. This machine was freshly assembled last fall.

I'm still curious why Carrara rendered those artifacts for 2 cpu buckets, and why now Carrara just exits to desktop now instead of giving that Memory Allocation Error. I never seem to get those any more...

For those thinking maybe its the HD's going to sleep from power management, but I set them to Always On for rendering. I've had some renders take 8hrs overnight to finish.

Thanks for everyone who chimed in sofar with questions or ideas to try. Hopefully what I'v e provided in this post will further help. Feel free to keep asking and suggesting things to try.

Did you tried the same thing with low settings? Same resolution with low settings, maybe the default when you enter Carrara...

The AA, 2 pixel accuracy, 2 pixel shadow accuracy , fast 16 pixel lighting quality is pretty much Carrara's default settings.

Only thing changed really was enabling Global Illumination: Sky Light  & Indirect Lighting, Light Through Transparency and Caustics (mostly default values for those, just enabling them).Only thing being affected by Light through Transparency and Caustics

Do you really need caustic?, try to disable both only to see if Carrara will rende rin this resolution... Carrara 7.1 is out now too!

 I have personally experienced this kind of problem (with the same artifacts). I was rendering with Poser5, (very hudge renders) and it was due to the launch of the screensaver after 1 hour of non-activity.
Is the screensaver disabled?

Quote - The AA, 2 pixel accuracy, 2 pixel shadow accuracy , fast 16 pixel lighting quality is pretty much Carrara's default settings.

Only thing changed really was enabling Global Illumination: Sky Light  & Indirect Lighting, Light Through Transparency and Caustics (mostly default values for those, just enabling them).Only thing being affected by Light through Transparency and Caustics

Hello
I have read in threads at Daz Forum that GI increases demand for memory. Some people have used lights attatched to domes as an alternative.
Also you should check to see how much phisical memory you actually have available in task mamager.
On windows XP 32, Windows Takes some memory for your video buffer. How much it takes depends on your video configuration,
and or card type. This can be 100s of megabytes.