MAX2014 SP1 Problem

[miketruly]

I downloaded and successfully installed the MAX2014 SP1 update then rebooted the system.  When I go to start MAX2014, I now get an error message that says:

3dsmax.exe - Unable to locate component

The application has failed to start because dxgi.dll was not found.  Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Any ideas how to add this file to XPx64 running MAX2014 SP1?

Thanks!

[spacefrog_]

I do not have this file in my Max Folder and it does not come with the Servicepack..

But i got the file in Windows\System32 and Windows\SysWOW64.

I think it's part of the DirectX installation and maybe this is the problem on your System. I would simply reinstall DirectX from the Mircosoft DirectX webinstaller, which downloads and install the parts reuqired for your System...

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

[miketruly]

Thank you for the ideas Josef!

This file appears to be related to DirectX11.

DirectX11 is not available for XPx64 so it appears that Autodesk has broken MAX2014 in XPx64 with this SP1 update. Thanks very much Autodesk!

I'll uninstall the SP and look forward to multiple days rebuilding a main workstation in the future so I can use later versions of the software.

[Anonymous]

No they did not broke it.

3ds max 2014 requires windows 7 or up. Youre using XP. XP is not supported. Update your OS

[miketruly]

That is correct... XPx64 is not officially supported.  Given that MAX2014 was working fine on XPx64 one minute prior to installing MAX2014 SP1, my opinion is that they DID break it (whether intentionally or not).

Also, since you're so knowledgeable about what they did or didn't do, please explain to me why the readme file specifically has instructions for uninstalling the SP1 from XPx64.

Either they intentionally knew it would break MAX2014 on XPx64 and the user would need uninstall instructions (would have been nice had the readme warned the XPx64 user before they installed the SP... yes, I read it ahead of time), or they recognized that some MAX users would be using this MAX2014 SP1 version on XPx64 (which again, works fine prior to the SP1 update).

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

The readme mentions XP as general and not XPx64 in particular. There is not a word about "XPx64" in English SP1 readme http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/3dsMax2014_SP1_Readme.html .

What you call "broken" might actually already been broken from the start and now was fixed.

Bottom line is that XP does not support DirectX 10/11

So your options are update your OS or switch to 2013

As for readme it might be just not updated "template" that still mentions XP.

[miketruly]

Thanks very much for the ideas!

[Anonymous]

So does SP1 break XP64 render nodes, or just workstations?

[miketruly]

I can't say as I never got that far.  I won't install it on the render nodes if it won't work on the Workstation.

[Anonymous]

Man I hope not. That would make a lot of people upgrade a lot of render nodes for no reason. Nobody wants to pay to upgrade render node OSes, especially if they have to reinstall everything and possibly break other apps. Luckily most of our farm is Win7, but XP 64 still plays a role. AutoDesk... What the heck? I sure wish there was a command line version of Max for net rendering. This whole starting a background GUI app thing is pretty inefficient...

[Anonymous]

I sure hope AD releases a hotfix to make render nodes work in XP64. There are a lot of angry people over at CGTalk and facebook, etc. There are a lot of big render farms out there that still have plenty of XP64 nodes.

[Anonymous]

3ds2014-renderslaves running fine on xp64 here.

Matthias

[spacefrog_]

@m-link: Really ?
Are you sure you are running Max2014 SP1 on the renderslaves ?

[miketruly]

Wow... I didn't know the render nodes were broken by this SP1 as well!

(When trying to run the SP1 on my XPx64 workstation, within 1 second of the MAX2014 icon being clicked the errors are thrown... so it must be pretty early in the code that it looks for the DirectX stuff).

[link]

of course you are right, still no 2014SP1 on the slaves here yet. luckily forgot to update the slave image!

Matthias

[Anonymous]

How well does the uninstall work? We have not been able to update yet due to finishing up a project. But if the uninstall actually works I could give it a shot on one node.

[Anonymous]

I installed sp1 on a 64bit XP render node, and sp1 DOES BREAK XP64 RENDER NODES. I get the same missing dll issue, and copying over the dll does not work, and the entry point is wrong. AUTODESK: Please fix this, ASAP! Now I am trying to uninstall Sp1...

[Steve_Curley]

I've installed it twice and uninstalled it twice (on my workstation) with no ill effects. Don't mess with it - just use the uninstaller (Control Panel > Add/Remove programs). Remember to tick the box for including (displaying) updates.

[Anonymous]

The uninstall seems to have worked properly...

[miketruly]

Back when I was trying to get this to work on my XPx64 workstation, I copied over the missing 'dxgi.dll' file from my Win7 system.  When I tried starting MAX again, this satisfied the need for this one dll, but then it immediately displayed another error about bad entrypoint in the 'msvcrt.dll' file.  I did a search and this file was located in about 7 places and I didn't feel comfortable trying to copy over this file to all these locations so I gave up.  So I don't know if this would have solved it and allowed MAX2014 SP1 to run.