hrmmmmm okay so at my new job we have new dell workstations. pretty nice systems, and specwise its should destroy my laptop . but now only after a week max has crashed like 6 times and its waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy slower. it takes 4 or 5 days to undo, undo works fine on my laptop. now i am wondering if it has something to do with dell computers. i have never had max crash on my laptop, actually either one, but when i worked at mythic and used a dell it crashed regularly and now at my new job it crashes like crazy. i really just want to ask people who use a dell at work or home with max and if you have problems with max hanging up or crashing frequently.

i have a dell and i have no problems. it's probably specific hardware causing the problems.

yeah i have dell at home, and here at mythic and have no problem

I used a Dell with Maya. The card on the machine didn't support DirectX!

Mine tended to be a dirt trap, I found that I had to open it up and clean out huge clumps of dust fairly regularly. Seemed to help.

Maybe you could list your hardware specs (other than Dell) and the viewport rendering mode so we can help you get your performance up.

pentium dual core extreme 3.2 ghz
2 gigs of ram
ati FireGL V5100. and i am using the 3ds max drivers from ati.
i dont know what the problem is. but i do know that rockstar was having the same undo problem and poop said he wont even use max 8 at work cause it crashes so much, and he too has a dell at work. i dont remember my specs on my dell at mythic, but it did crash every so often there, and some people say thats normal, but max has never crashed on my laptop, not even once. its not just me at work either, pretty much everyone there has max problems and different specs, i got a new machine so mine specs are different but all the computers are dell. its to the point where we are thinking of switching to xsi.

what about replacing that ATI for an nvidia board for testing purposes? you are aware that ATI has a bad reputation for their drivers?

not wanting to advertise here, but if your company has the budget for "pro" cards, you might want to try if a quadro solves your problems. maxtreme is awesome, treats me very well [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'll second the Nvidia idea. I'm using one of those on a Dell here with no more crashes than the usual.

If your Max runs in OpenGL switch to DirectX or vice versa, might help.

yeah i have switch between direct x and open gl. i dont think its the ati card cause there are folks here at work with nvidia cards and max still crashes for them.
Eric, what exactly do you mean by no more crashes than usual? usually max dosent crash for me at all, this is a pretty new to me vs my laptop.

Do they run Max from a central server maybe? That would might cause that kind of an issue.

Too much ram? Too little ram? OS versions? Background programs?
Compare it with your coworkers machines and with your laptop.
Maybe its some soft your company forces on each computer like some stupid anti virus or firewall or i dont know what.
Maybe its some Windows patch?

I've noticed all the dells at my office run like crap, it seems to be some sort of conflict between norton internet security and microsoft isa server (proxy).

I have had crashes ever since the first version of Max, and before with the DOS predecessor too. Different issues in different versions, but there was always something.

In the last couple versions Max seemed to work better with Nvidia cards than ATI.

Oh yeah, people had numerous issues with Norton and Max, back in v5 and v6 I think. I didn't keep up on it, don't use Norton here.

Also check out what 3rdparty plugins/scripts are installed. These can cause memory-mgmt and interoperability problems. Create a new default install in another folder, see if crashes still occur.

chances are he has a buttload of inhouse max tools installed that cause the crashes. or alienbrain crap, or whatever.

With the CPU being dual core it could be that MAX just doesn't play well with two CPU cores. A lot of applications still arn't completly stable on dual core CPU's. Try forcing MAX to run on only one core and see if that helps. Make a new shortcut for MAX and add,

/C start /AFFINITY 1

to the end of the path, so it would be something like

"CProgram Files\Autodesk\3dsMax8\3dsmax.exe" /C start /AFFINITY 1

you can try pyromania's technique for a single session by hitting control+alt+del and right clicking on the process, choosing "set affinity" and unclicking one of the CPUs...

It'll reset to two next time you load the program, but it's handy to test applications.

I'm using a dell at home and work, no real problems. Undo-ing a lot really fast, like mashing-the-keys-fast, will sometimes cause a crash though.