Alright, can you try the following steps:
*) Save the current V-Ray settings - use the preset option
*) Go to render settings > Common tab > Assign render > change the production renderer to Default scanline
*) Set back the V-Ray advanced renderer
And let me know if this helps.
We are also having this problem, in 2 old scene files we are working on. Reloading the settings as suggested does not work for us. Restart slaves is checked on the workstation that submits the job to backburner as well as on the DR host via the vray_dr.cfg file.
Strangely it seems 2 of our farm are immune from the problem, but the other 20 all hang and sit there using 1 core at 100% until the spawner is restarted manually.
Let me know if you need any info from me to help troubleshoot.
Cheers,
Olly
Can you get me a .dmp file from those machines for the 3dsmax.exe process while they are in this state? You can generate a minidmp file with Process Explorer and send it to vlado@chaosgroup.com
Best regards,
Vlado
Yep. I have some renders running tonight so when it happens I will grab it.
Vlado - I just wanted to update you. It seems the settings export, reset, and import actually did fix this issue - so thanks for that. Now all we need is for v-ray to handle this internally as it can be a pain on an old scene with 54 passes in rpmanager!
Well if you don’t get me some reproducible case, I don’t know what to fix…
Best regards,
Vlado
sorry, ii thought the settings reset was based on something you had discovered. I will go back to an old version of our problem scene to see if I can reproduce it and send it to you for testing.
i have to report were gettgin this very often now.
basically after every job we render, we have to manually close and restart the vray spawners otherwise they dont connect through BB at all.
Of course we have “restart on render end” selected
latest vray
We had exactly the same problem a few days ago. After rendering was done on the slaves, vray spawner disappeared from the taskbar but remained in the tray and we had to manually close the spawners on each slave and then run it again otherwise they couldn’t connect on new renders. We had to do this every time on renders that used the slaves. We’ve tried numerous things to fix it but I think when we finally decided to reinstall Vray on each machine this fixed the problem for us.
What is the exact V-Ray version - 3.20.03 ? All machines participating in the DR job should have the same V-Ray versions installed.
Have you noticed the what error message is printed in the log of the workstation when the spawners get busy?
Would it be possible to send us the log from one of the slave machines as soon as this issue occurs?
all machines same version yes Tashko,
i will send a log as soon as this happens again.
We have made one change since yesterday which is bound to this problem here:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/cannot-sign-in-autodesk-component-crash/td-p/5825391/page/5
apparently the Internet Explorer automatically changed certain LAN connections…so we had problems running max desktop subscriptions
made a fix…
so lets see if its because of that …
Actually I don’t think there is a relation between this problem and the one you have with the DR servers. This is in case that the issue is not related to the licensing, which should be registered in the slave V-Ray log file.
were in communication with your licencing guys now and were transfergin all the render node licences to a newer dongle type…maybe that will help
Thank you Martin. Please keep us posted.
We started getting this problem again 
Vray spawner disappears from the taskbar but remains in the tray and the slaves can’t connect unless the spawner is closed and run again. And sometimes 3ds max just outright crashes on the slaves with the following message “3ds max application has stopped working”.
Would it be possible that the slave machine is running out of memory with this scene?
Can you check the V-ray log file for any useful information?
Yep we have it again too.
after all the hustle with the new dongles and everything…started doing after a week or so.
Could not manage to get the log file cos my colleague has restarted all the spawners.
Its crazy how unstable and unreliable it is and it drives me nuts whats causing it.
We had deadlines today and we wont be able to make them cos of instability.
It there anything i could check on the network settings?
Its unlikely it would be cause by router or anything like that
Turning on the “restart slaves on render end” option will do the same thing for you automatically, without the need to go and restart them manually. I’m not sure if there’s anything else that can be done about it on our end.
Best regards,
Vlado
we have that selected on all the machines that send the jobs to the farm actually.
We have all the checkboxes selected in the DR pop up so i am really out of ideas what to check for.
I’m out of ideas too. If you manage to get us some of those logs, they will be helpful. If you can manage to get us 3ds max minidump files from the 3dsmax.exe process (either through task manager or the Process Explorer) on your render slaves after you start getting these errors, they will be helpful too. Beyond that, no idea what’s going on.
Best regards,
Vlado