topic Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden? in Maya Forum

Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

kenne150 — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:02:45 GMT

Uhg. I've been using Maya for a couple of years, and the past couple of months I'm at my wits end. I'm using Maya 2018 (still). I used to be able to create a project folder, adjust my lighting, render settings, many other settings, and when I opened my project back up, all was well with the world and my settings were just as I left them.. but..... All of a sudden a couple of months ago this ended. All the way down to me having to turn the undo back on every time I reopened the projects, I have forgotten this a couple of times and regretted it. I have to go into the settings every time I open and turn it back on. All of my render settings revert to default. For some reason the sample size on all of my lights are set back to zero. And the step snaps! I hate them. I always have them off, and they are magically back on every time I open the project. I have done the "prefsold" trick multiple times with no luck. I'm not sure what to try any more. I even made a whole new project folder and imported all of my assets into it. Has anyone else encountered this, or have suggestions as to how I can force Maya to remember my preferences? On another note.... the ESC key is broken on my computer, is there an alternate way to halt rendering beside using the ESC key? I tried "CTRL + [", but it didn't work. I've have to force close Maya a couple of times when I needed to stop rendering in the middle of a project. Thanks.

If it make a difference, I have an HP Spectra 360 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz, 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable), Windows 10 Home. thanks again.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

teddude75 — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:58:09 GMT

The problem is in your maya preferences settings. There is an option that saves your preferences with the file and another option that saves upon exit. Uncheck both and save your preferences. Sorry I don’t have maya in front of me right now. Any changes to your preferences you must change save your preferences.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

kenne150 — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 01:14:03 GMT

I can't seem to find this option. I've never had to tell it to save my preferences before.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

teddude75 — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 01:25:14 GMT

http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=111

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

kenne150 — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 02:12:38 GMT

Hi, I'm not needing to reset anything. I want Maya to save my settings and preferences. It has always saved them until recently.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

teddude75 — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 02:33:39 GMT

to save your preferences file>save preferences and to prevent changes window>settings/preferences>preferences Uncheck save preferences on exit and save preferences with file. I think it’s under save settings

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

swick008 — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 20:25:10 GMT

I am using 2023, just got it. I've been using Maya for over 20 years. I have tried everything I can think of including the above. No matter what, all my settings and preferences are completely blown away every time I restart (it continues to take me to the stupid home page which I also have disabled in my saved preferences). This is incredibly frustrating. Only thing different from using 2020 previously, is that I bought a 1 year indie license vs. paying monthly for 2020. For now I have to just leave maya running for eternity and continue to open new files with out closing the app. This means I can not run multiple instances of maya at the same time, which severely hinders my workflow. I have not received a legit response from Autodesk yet.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

marius.melbostad — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 11:37:19 GMT

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Working-Units-does-not-save-to-preferences.html

This helped me 😄

Betreff: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

CINLAY_VFX — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 11:00:06 GMT

Was this problem solved yet?

No??

How unexpected ... oh wait, we´re talking about Autodesk. How expected.

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

troy.carpenter — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:48:38 GMT

I have this problem too.

I get the following error messages in the console when I try to save my preferences:

saveShelf Polygons "C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons"; // Error: line 1: Can't open the file: C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons // Warning: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2025/scripts/startup/syncGlobalOptVars.mel line 72: Failed to save C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons.mel. Check write permission // Warning: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2025/scripts/startup/preferencesWnd.mel line 101: Save of "C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/userPrefs.mel" failed // Warning: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2025/scripts/startup/preferencesWnd.mel line 101: Save of "C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/windowPrefs.mel" failed // Warning: line 1: Save of "C:/Users/troyc/Documents/maya/2025/prefs/pluginPrefs.mel" failed // Warning: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2025/scripts/startup/preferencesWnd.mel line 101: Not all preferences were saved. See Script Editor for details.

What I believe is happening is Maya is unable to save to anything in my documents folder for some reason. I am using Windows 11 and have checked write protection on all of these files. Write and modify is enabled through inheriting those permissions from the documents folder. It seems to be a joint problem between some software and Windows, as I am also not able to save my Houdini settings and shelves. These also are supposed to save to the documents folder. It is a single user PC that I own and am the system admin. About a year and a half ago, I cloned my c drive to a larger hard-drive. About half a year ago, I upgraded the machine from windows 10 to 11. This problem is new to last three weeks or so. I am having to change my preferences by manually editing the mel scripts in visual studio code, though this is very limiting as I do not know a lot of the parameter names. The mel scripts save fine from VSC, so it seems to be a Maya and Houdini exclusive issue to not be able to save to the documents folder. I am in email contact with SideFX to see if they have any ideas, but I thought I would post this here for Maya users who have this issue in the future or in case anyone familiar with the Windows side of things has any ideas.

Has anyone experienced this before? How did you solve it? If you haven't experienced this, do you have any ideas on what could be causing it?

Re: Maya not saving preferences all of a sudden?

troy.carpenter — Fri, 02 May 2025 12:45:34 GMT

Solution:

I found a solution that works in my situation. I had oneDrive installed on my machine and have a oneDrive subscription, but I didn't have my documents syncing with oneDrive. In my documents folder, I clicked on the backup button in the file path window at the top of windows explorer. Once my documents finished being moved to the documents folder in oneDrive. I restarted Maya and Houdini. Both applications are now able to save preferences and shelves.