Max 2012 constant crash on new laptop: customize UI and maxscript

[simmsimaging]

Just got a new laptop for remote work and installed a fresh copy of 2012 Design on there. It's crashing right out everytime I try to save/load a custom UI, or run/open a Maxscript. A few other things seem to cause it too (e.g loading a bitmap into a bitmap shader).

I've tried everything I can think of an AD support is drawing a blank so far. This is happening with a perfectly default install and all support files (that I could find) were deleted too prior to reinstalling (tried it a few times now).

Just wondering if anyone here has had similar problems and figured it out?

Asus G74S laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium 64

/b

[vlado]

Do you get crash dumps out of that? They might give hints at where the problem is.

Best regards,
Vlado

[simmsimaging]

Hi Vlado -
I think there are minidump files generated, but AD hasn't requested any of me so no one has looked at them yet.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Run max in admin mode see if that's help.

[Pictor2]

try installing an older (certified) Nvidia graphics driver. We had similar problems in 2012 allbeit on a desktop PC.

[simmsimaging]

try installing an older (certified) Nvidia graphics driver. We had similar problems in 2012 allbeit on a desktop PC.

Thanks. The existing driver was an older one (April or May of 2011) so I tried the newest one. No change in the problem.

Run max in admin mode see if that's help.

yeah, this didn't work either, but thanks.

So far nothing more from AD either. I've narrowed it down to anything that accesses the file browser dialog (file/open, maxscript/ run script, etc. etc). However, Max 2011 runs fine.

/b

[vlado]

It's silly, but could it be related to the "Home" edition?

Best regards,
Vlado

[simmsimaging]

In a sense yes! Last night I actually started looking around on that basis - wondering if it was Windows thing with this laptop instead of Max, and found a lot of people with 7 Home had problems with file browsing in various applications that were related to "recent" file lists. I killed a file browsing utility I use called Direct Folders and it stopped the crashing. It didn't occur to me that it would be an issue because I wasn't accessing it Direct Folder at all, but it was still tracking the applications recent file list in the background.

I've just been testing this morning to make sure, but disabling Direct Folder's recent list for 2012 seems to have fixed it. DF has been bullet proof for years, but there may be something specific to Home that causes the conflict.