"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
>
> Stopping a render like this does raise a question in my mind, though: If
> POV-Ray normally takes time to "clean out" (or "make available again"?) the
> many small fragments of hard drive memory it has used, am I creating
> "other" problems by terminating POV this way? So far, it doesn't seem
> so...but I'm not Windows-saavy enough to know.

I believe you very well could be causing other problems.  POV fills
available RAM, and then starts writing to the "swap file" on the hard disk.
 I have had these long shut-down times happen to me, on a new Athlon system
with a gig of RAM, usually when I am using photon mapping.  Sometimes
Windows will even increase the size of my swap file on the fly.  I would
assume that POV tries to be "tidy" and clean up the swap file before
exiting.  If not allowed to do so, will all that data just stay there
hogging disk space and slowing the system? I am not sure, but even on my
roomy 1600 gig drive I'd rather not take the chance.

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