XSI failed to save scene before system failure

[imding]

Hi, does anyone have problem launching Softimage? it crashes before loading the viewports with a message "failed to save scene before system failure", Process Monitor shows the last loaded .dll is timemanager.dll, after that XSI loads nothing and crashes. Somehow, with (and only with) Process Monitor running it manages to launch on my laptop but sometimes it still crashes, though combination of runonce.bat and restarting windows fix it. this is so weird, i've had XSI since 2007 and this only started to happen about a year ago with v2012, and i later realized it wasn't just v2012 but all XSI versions.

now i'm stuck with working my my slow laptop and render on my PC with xsibatch.bat command line

both my PC and laptop have WIN7 ULTI 64bit, my laptop has GTX 260M and my PC has GTX 590.

[julius]

probably a graphic card driver issue. Try to update.

[imding]

hi Julius, thanks I've tried that a million times, even reverting back to earlier drivers prior to the problem occurred, to no avail

maybe I will borrow a different card and try it that way to know for sure if it's a video card issue, but it seems odd that the problem would happen to both my laptop and PC.

[Hirazi Blue]

I assume you've run this test already...
Testing whether a startup crash is related to the display driver.

[imding]

yea i've done that, didn't fix it. that's why i'm somewhat convinced it isn't a video card issue. but again i haven't tested it with any other PC apart from my laptop and PC, so if it works elsewhere it must be something about my hardware.

[whurst]

I had this too long time ago. I figured out the problem causes a plugin. I guess in my case it was a PhysX plugin.

You can try to remove (simply rename the directory or files) some plugins

Finally rename the whole user autodesk softimage directory (C:\Users\<xxx>\Autodesk\....) to give the XSI a try to start without any user plugins and setting.

If this will work, you have to figure out what stuff do the crash by enabling anything step by step (this is painfull stuff)

Finally you can do this with the system plugins as well. but this should not responsible for crashes, XSI is crash free lol ...

[xsisupport]

yea i've done that, didn't fix it. that's why i'm somewhat convinced it isn't a video card issue. but again i haven't tested it with any other PC apart from my laptop and PC, so if it works elsewhere it must be something about my hardware.

It's not supposed to fix "it". I assume you mean that that XSI.exe still crashed even with the viewports hidden?

Softimage works on plenty of other machines, so it's probably something specific to your systems.

[imding]

@whurst i did delete the entire pref folder altogether but still it would crash, but thanks anyway. yea my experience with xsi has always been smooth up until this crash thing.

@xsisupport yea i meant it didn't lead anywhere for me to eventually fix the problem, you're probably right i'm pretty sure it's my video card now cos i just replaced my entire rig (except psu and GTX 590), fresh OS install and it would still crash. do you reckon upgrading to Windows 8 would do anything? considering OS and GPU are the only things i didn't change, it's the cheaper option to replace.

[julius]

did you try to delete all addons/plugins and workgroups ? to avoid softimage to load them while starting ?

edit : ups, sorry, it seem's that you already tried....

[whurst]

ok try 2

i assume you already install any patches, gfx drivers, chipset drivers and stuff

check your PATH environ. maybe another program "steals" a necessary dll from windows

on win 7 there is a compatiblity mode, if this exists on win 8 too ? dunno - if - try it. maybe something is wrong with win 8 api ?!?

did you install direct x software ? maybe this break stuff in combination ... try to deinstall it (but i dunno how ... lol ...)

you can try to deinstall the GPU drivers and back to VGA mode. Restart it if it's still crash, it's not the GPU driver

expert mode:

try to use sysinternals filemon (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896642.aspx) and capture the entire system while starting. you can filter the activity on the XSI process. maybe "maybe" you see some "ugly" stuff here. access denied where you should have, dll not found these sounds like you should have.

use procmon and show all loaded dll. maybe he loaded a dll on wrong place. eg. c:\Toolbar\msctl.dll or other crap You can find these stuff with filemon too

check your license server. is this running ? check the log files, maybe there is something strange. in filemon there is no network activity, if you have a network license, try to shutdown the local license server and edit the setenv.bat and type in a hostname of your network license server. like: @blabla. He could not get any license, but should not crash. If it still crash, it crash before he's check the license and you can saftly say : "it's not the license server"

conclusion: it could be anything ... if you got a crash dump report ? there is a hidden "button" (hide after two other links) where you can see the XML of the dump. Maybe you can see there where (in what modul) he crash ... but i am unsure if this always the same module. In my "crash-days" it crashes in any modules each time i start. it's not very helpful than but a change

[FXDude]

Did your XSI Booting work out?

Whurst alluded to compatability modes, which I was also about to suggest, but you can also try just running as admin, in case it doesn't have write access somewhere that it should.

cheers

[imding]

ok try 2

you can try to deinstall the GPU drivers and back to VGA mode. Restart it if it's still crash, it's not the GPU driver

after uninstalling the GPU driver and rebooting, Windows auto-installed a default video driver, at this point SI would still not launch the viewport before crashing, but somehow with Procmon.exe running SI launches as expected, this is the case on my laptop, where I must have Procmon.exe running for SI to launch.

so for anyone who has the same problem (although I doubt there're many considering how little info there is on the web), this is your solution. thank you whurst!!!