** I am able to start and stop all render nodes with one bat using pstools…sweet!**
psservice \\Xp64rend1 -u administrator -p ***** restart “VRaySpawner 2010”
psservice \\Xp64rend2 -u administrator -p ***** restart “VRaySpawner 2010”
psservice \\Xp64rend3 -u administrator -p ***** restart “VRaySpawner 2010”
psservice \\Xp64rend4 -u administrator -p ***** restart “VRaySpawner 2010”
psservice \\BOBBY-P-XP -u administrator -p ***** restart “VRaySpawner 2010”
and you’ve just shared your admin passwords to the entire world! not so sweet ! 
admin password
No worries… Even if they could locate my IP I am behind a corporate firewall. I did notice that the render slaves still only work if I manually stop and start the service at all slaves. The script works because I see the service start/stop, but they don’t contribute until I go to each node ans start/stop.
Similar problem
I’ve actually been trying to get it working for some time now. Hasn’t worked for me completely, but perhaps someone can help fill the gaps/suggest a solution… as it can be a time saver for any company running a small in-house renderfarm.
We’re not using services, but actually running spawner and backburner at computer startup with logon disabled. Remote desktop can be used to connect and see progress or identify problems on those machines.
Main problem is restarting slaves when vrayspawner crashes (especially often if you cancel an ongoing DR render) without having to connect to all computers through remote desktop. I use taskkill to kill vrayspawner and 3dsmax, render.txt being a text file with list of computers:
@echo off
setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion
set LISTFILE=render.txt
:: check that the listfile is there
if not exist %LISTFILE% (
echo Listfile %LISTFILE% not found. Create it and try again.
exit /b 1
)
:: Loop through the server list
for /F %%A in (%LISTFILE%) do (
taskkill.exe /s %%A /IM vrayspawner2010.exe /f
taskkill.exe /s %%A /IM 3dsmax.exe /f
)
endlocal
Then I use psexec to start the spawner on those computers:
for /f “tokens=1” %%s in (render.txt) do (
psexec.exe \\%%s -u DOMAIN\username -p password -s -i 1 -d “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2010\vrayspawner2010.exe”
)
Depending on OS after -i you should either put 1 (for vista) or 0 (for xp) so the program is run on the screen and you can see it through Remote Desktop. Works fine and those computers connect to DR, but problem is that the task is run as system user that doesn’t have access to any of the network drives. Seems that it doesn’t take into account the username/password, as can put anything there with same result.
I’ve exact same problem, I made an intranet to control all pcs over vnc, this works like a charm, but these days I’ve ad options to start/kill BB/DR with psexec and pskill, and things starts correctly, process in taskmanager is registered with right username, but these process can’t access to network drive.
Any idea ?
Our small renderfarm of 4 quats is using VNC too.
To stay compatible to older projects setup with networkdrives we decided to use DR via spawnerEXE not as service.
We would love to use DR as service cause there are big performance issue when using the workstations as DRclients too.
I wrote some scripts to automatic convert networkdrive paths to UNC. Maxscript provides some great functions for that.
Someday we got all files UNC and able render bucketfree via service.
for me it seems to vary by max release, in 2008, i could only get them to pick up via service with domain logons, in 2010, they only seem to pick up run via the EXE.. I’ve set up a few scripts to work with it over the years.
At this point the farm is downsized so far (And stable enough) that i tend to just reboot them in cases of major troubles with them set up to autologin and a few startup options.
Klons, there is an option in the menu for the Asset Tracker to automatically convert network paths to UNC paths, thats been there for several releases, in 2010 they also have the same checkbox in the Files portion of the Preferences menu
between using that, and having my project folders mapped as \\unc drives in DirectFolders, theres very few drive letter problems anymore.
I’ve solve the problem by lauching a remote bat with psexec, and inside this remote bat, I simply reconnect all network shares with net use.
Thks Dave for the option to convert to unc, didn’t found it yesterday héhé