As I posted here. It seems it may be a VRay issue.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=975490&highlight=preset
Do you have the “Compress files on save” option enabled in the 3ds Max preferences?
Best regards,
Vlado
Yeah that’s on - why would it affect it?
Try turning it off… presets are in fact, regular 3ds Max files, so the compression option affects them.
Best regards,
Vlado
It worked! Thanks.
OK we are having this issue now with Max 2015 and VRay 2.5
Compression is OFF
This could possibly be related:
Any more ideas?
Does the crash appear if you load it on empty scene?
Yes it does. But again, it’s random. I’m suspecting a VRay license issue, but can’t be sure yet
Doesnt look like this is license related.
But it keeps on happening. On average about 50% of the time, it crashes max. Well max hangs, task manager says CPU is busy at 8% but it just sits there. RAM usage also just sits there, doesnt go up or down
Would it be possible to attach the preset for investigation then?
Do you know what steps that we should follow in order to reproduce the issue?
Here’s the file. Put it somewhere on a server, not your local pc.
Nothing special for the crash, just load it. With an empty scene and also with a heavy scene. Half the time it crashes
This is with max 2015 and VRay 2.5
I also have other presets, it does it with all of them. And also on different workstations
ps.zip (4.28 KB)
Alternatively, I can use maxscript to set all the settings. Will this still work IF there is no license available?
Yes, it works.
Best regards,
Vlado
I made a test on several machines with your preset (loaded from a network location) and was not able to replicate it.
Does your machine become responsive after a while ?
No it just sits there. Task manager CPU is stuck on 8% and ram doesnt move. Left it for 15 min, nothing happens.
Will test it a bit later purposely without a license and see if it hangs everytime…
Since we can’t reproduce it here, it will be very difficult to localize the problem. Maybe we can try to arrange a remote session and troubleshoot the issue further.
So you could contact us via our support mail at any time with request for assistance about this topic.
I have the exact same problem with crash when loading render presets. Did you find a solution for this? (Vray 2.50.01 on 3dsmax 2015)
Is “Compress files on save” option activated from the Preference Settings?
Does it crash on every scene or on empty scene?
It was random. I sorted it by writing a script to switch between my different settings
“Compress files on save” is not on. Its random here as well. Sometimes it hangs max sometimes not.
As long as I remember to save before loading a preset I’m safe. But a script is smarter 
Thanks for the tip.