Hi arran, I'll try that later on... I'm done for just now, need a break. Thanks for the suggestion. I've optimized and deleted history... the only thing flagged up by mesh cleanup are a few ngons (only on faces that meet a beveled corner - I don't think they should be an issue, or should they?). The thing is the scene renders on the laptop... but it doesn't have a graphics card so it artefacts, and is not a solution. Suggests that the scene is ok though. A fiend has offered me two gigs decent memory... I'll have those tomorrow hopefully. He may also be going to give me a new motherboard and processor. I'll post back once I try these out, thanks again, gubar