Hey, everyone. I have messed with 3DS Max 6 for a while, on the modelling side. I'm not too great, but I feel it's all I need if I just wanted to get some sort of 3D game developed. But now I want to move on to animations. And I don't mean for characters or anything. I know how to use bones, skin a mesh, and animate it. I know how to use "Edit Envelopes", and all that other stuff. But now, here is the problem. LoL, sorry! =P Sometimes, when I have multiple bones connected, the bone that controls a certain range of vertices on a box or something tends to drag the other bones along with it. And it causes the vertices in the other bones' "ranges" to move as well. I know there is a way to change this. I saw it. But I don't remember the website, so could someone tell me how to change the "stiffness" or whatever it is called, of the bones, please? Thanks in advance, Matt U.

This process is called Binding, Rigging, or Skinning. My suggestion is to go through the tutorials included in 3ds max, they are better than the rigging tutorials found on sites like www.3dtotal.com.
You're going to have to adjust the envelopes, then paint weights, to get proper geomtry deformation. As far as your bones go, you are using Forward Kinematics, which means it works like a simple hierarchy, where the parent will rotate the child, but the child will not rotate the parent. I'm not exactly sure what your 'dragging of bones' problem is, maybe post an annotated picture. But proper envoloping and skinning should solve your geometry problem.