DR max crashing.. help?

[super gnu]

ok my renderslave has been working fine until 1 hr ago.

now every time i submit a job to it via dr, the copy of max starts loading something (increases ram usage from the basic 400meg up to about 800, then stops increasing.. then max dissapears and is restarted by the spawner. again and again.

ive restarted the machine, restarted max on the submitting machine..

its the same job that has been rendering happily for weeks.


i checked the vraylog, but it seems not to have been updated since january?! is there a new log file for vray 3.2? in a different place?

this is quite urgent i have tons and tons of rendering to do.

[super gnu]

ive just tried with a simple scene and i get the same behaviour.

ive also tried submitting a whole frame to that machine via backburner and max crashes out instantly there too.. so could be something in max has become corrupted?

errors in backburner are useless as usual:

"3dsmax.exe process no response"

[super gnu]

ive just tried using vray rt as the engine.. via backburner still, same result.

[tricky]

Try disabling windows firewall entirely. Sometimes updates switch it back on.

[super gnu]

firewall is off already.. i just checked though.

it seems my copy of max has been corrupted somehow..

if i open max on my rendernode, it opens fine, and i can open any of the crappy little sample scenes that come with max.

but the moment i try to open a vray type scene ( ive treid my current 2gb jobby, plus the little interior used for the gpu benchmark... - i get immediate crash to desktop.. this is with or without vray selected as the renderer.

[super gnu]

hmph.. i unistalled vray, as i thought something there might have been corrupted..

and then tried opening the rt benchmark scene.. i get lots of errors about missing plugins.. i hit ok, then the same immediate crash as before. what on earth could it be?


same result if i delete 3dsmax.ini

[tricky]

Any updates gone on lately? Maybe system restore to yesterday?

[super gnu]

well i would if i had any restore points.. its a renderbox and i didnt set that up. i tried running a "repair" on max but it did nothing.. im just reinstalling max now.. see what happens.

[super gnu]

ok this is frying my brain.. ive uninstalled and reinstalled max, and i *still* have the same problem.

[tricky]

Try replacing the vraydummy2014.max on your renderbox with the one from your workstation?

[super gnu]

i could try that, but a) ive reinstalled vray twice now, and b) i also get the issue just opening a vray scene in max, so that would not be related to that file.

im now (as a last desperate attempt before reformatting the machine) uninstalling max again. this time im gonna manually delete every scrap of autodesk and chaos stuff off my system before reinstalling.

[tricky]

this time im gonna manually delete every scrap of autodesk and chaos stuff off my system before reinstalling.

I would hope this is the key step. Uninstalling doesn't necessarily remove everything.

[super gnu]

bingo. after 2 hours of fannying round, im back up and running.

[tricky]

bingo. after 2 hours of fannying round, im back up and running.

So...what was it?

[super gnu]

err.. dunno.. i just cleaned out all the residual folders after uninstalling max and vray, then reinstalled.. and its working. who knows. what a waste of an afternoon.