The3ds max will open like normal, but clicking once anywhere in the application will result in a dialog asking:
"An error has occurred and the program will now close. Do you want to atempt to save a copy of the current scene?"
I have already reinstalled the program and I am at a loss as to what to do next
I had a similar problem a few years ago with a new Dell portable workstation. It came with 2 one gig memory chips. When I opened Max and started to work, I could only do any where from 1 to 5 mouse clicks before Max crashed with a message such as the one you described. After a couple of days with a Dell representative, on the phone, we found that one of the memory chips was bad. I discovered this by removing one chip and starting max; then replacing that chip and removing the other one. Here is the break down:
I removed one chip and started Max:
1) If this was the "bad" chip, Max would start and then crash when I started to use the mouse. Nothing had changed.
2) If this was the "good" chip, Max would not start, due to insufficient memory.
Dell replaced the bad chip and I was good to go. I don't know if this is representative of your problem; but, I do believe that this issue is hardware based and, probably/maybe due to insufficient memory. Good luck.
My problem did not occur until after I had been using it for 3 weeks, or so. I don't know why it took so long to fail. After I replaced the faulty chip, Max worked very well with 2gb, as long as I kept things simple. Newer versions of Max might require more memory. This occurred about 7 or 8 (+or-) years ago. I don't remember which version of Max I was using. In my case. I was still adding software to the new computer. An increasing number of processes were running in the background, progressively, reducing the amount of memory available to Max.
It would be nice if you knew somebody who would loan you a 2gb chip for testing purpose's.
If you open Max with the Enhanced Menu, trying switching back to the Default Menu, if possible.
You might try eliminating everything that is not required by Max. Open the Windows Task Manager > Performance tab. Open Max and see what happens to the physical memory. There are a lot of very smart, experienced Max users on this forum. If you rule out the possibility that this problem is caused by insufficient memory, somebody will, probably, come up with other suggestions. Good luck.