3ds Max 7 Severe Errors

invicticide

Hey all, I have two serious problems with 3ds Max 7 that are currently rendering the software non-functional. The first is that whenever I select anything out of any menu, the program locks up. It doesn't crash, and the rest of my computer still functions (i.e. I can kill max via the Task Manager) but max simply stops responding. The other problem is that when I link max to the DirectX 9.0 SDK (June 2005) max plugins (for the purpose of exporting .x files), max crashes to desktop during startup.

I currently have max configured to use Direct3D via DirectX 9.0c and I have the proper non-debug runtimes installed. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling but both symptoms exist even from a fresh installation.

Specs:

Windows XP Professional
Pentium IV 2.6 GHz
1024 MB RAMBUS on Asus P4T-E Motherboard
GeForce 6800 GT
DirectX 9.0c Release Runtime
DirectX 9.0 SDK w/ June 2005 Update

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

That is all.

pyromania

The menu lock up problem sounds like a similar problem I had between MAX 6 and Ultramon. Are you using ultramon on a dual monitor setup? If you are, just update ultramon to the latest version.

invicticide

Fascinating. I am indeed using UltraMon. Just now I tried killing it entirely and reverting to Windows' standard dual-monitor function, and max works fine. Of course, I live and die by UltraMon's special functionality so this is an inconvenient solution. I am currently using UltraMon version 2.6 which AFAIK is the latest. I wonder if perhaps there's a setting in UltraMon that could fix the problem?

The other problem, which still persists even with UltraMon disabled, is that of the .x exporter. Currently I'm linking to the DirectX 9.0 SDK (I got this information out of an MSDN article at Microsoft's web site) which supposedly enables DirectX extensions for 3ds max. This linkage crashes max at startup, so I have to remove the entry from plugin.ini to get max to start. I have so far had no luck finding a standalone .x exporter that I can use like a normal plugin without all this SDK linkage crap... any suggestions?

Thanks, we're making headway!

That is all.

invicticide

Update: I finally found a working .x exporter outside of the DirectX SDK, so that crash-on-startup is solved and I have the functionality I need. I'm going to contact the creator of UltraMon and see if he can shed any light on my lock-up situation but for the time being I can work around it by disabling UltraMon.

One final question, though I'm pretty sure I already know the answer: is there any known way of changing the coordinate system in max so that the Y-axis is up? This is really not a big deal since my exporter takes this into account, but I'm just curious.

That is all.

pyromania

What happened was that the first few versions of 2.6 had the problem with MAX. A patch to 2.6 was released and later rolled into the latest version of 2.6 For example I'm running version 2.6.23.0 which has the patch rolled in.

Downloading the latest 2.6 version from ultramon's website should fix the problem.