Viewport won't refresh

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I installed Marvelous Designer 8, did a reboot, and now my viewports look like this - and they will not update. When I move something or click something, it leaves a pixel-trail. It also doesnt' seem as if Max retains its settings after going to customise->preferences, changing to OpenGL, checking the redraw checkbox, clicking OK, and switching back to Nitrous and restarting.
Also tried all the other graphic options, and updated my Nvidia 1080 driver to the current one, 419.67, and I installed the latest Max updates via the autodesk app
Does anyone have any insights on how I can fix this? Thank you!

[RobH2]

Try this:

Go to 'C:\Users\%Your User%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2019 - 64bit\' and find the 'ENU' folder. Rename it so something like 'ENU_ORIGINAL'. Then restart Max. It will build a brand new one. See if things work well. If so and you haven't done much customization of Max, you'll be good to go without too much effort.

If you have customized a lot, there are ways to protect and save a good bit of that configuration. You and search here and Google for info on that. It's out there. 

[Anonymous]

Alas, this si not helping, nor is cleaning my registry  or any of the other things I tried. 
Thank you so much for your help, though!
It's as if Max refuses to refresh for some reason

[Anonymous]

i can't nail the problem's solution off-hand, however, did you try sving your work, and going to "File->Reset" and see if the app manages to revert to default ui?

If that fails,  a re-install should work; CAUTION: Backup your plugins, scripts, scenes, and any other non-native content so that you can be sure they won't be wiped.

Sorry for your troubles, Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

I did a complete reinstall.
I scrubbed everything from common files to the autodeskfiles in AppData to temp files and registry settings
to no avail.

It's the third time this has happened to me. The only thing that's helped so far, is a complete OS reinstall.
Whenever I install new software, Max 19 goes crazy like this.

[Anonymous]

I've narrowed it down to this: 
Once new software is installed, something sends a UI size call somewhere.
If Max is open,  and is closed, it will re-open with mangled UI scale settings.

The UI is fine at i.e 2 or 3K at 100% display scale.

Go to the recommended Windows setting of 150% - and it looks like this.

This is a bug, not a user fault. So - are any Autodesk staff frequenting this forum, or is there a bug base anywhere? 
Cause if I want to finish any project, I have to scale down my UI, meaning I can't see anything without a magnification glass and I have to adjust my UI every  time I use Max. Which is ironic, because on a clean windows install, scale is not an issue whatsoever. 

[brentscannell · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

I believe I've seen something like this before after the installation of some software or 3rd party plugins.

Can you please check if you now have an environment variable on your user profile that looks like:

QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO = auto

and if yes, please remove it and restart

reference thread: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-forum/3ds-max-2018-dpi-scaling-4k-issue/td-p/7832679

[RobH2]

Really frustrating. Somehow I don't think it's a bug or we'd be seeing a lot of people screaming about it in the forum. 

Have you run integrity checks SFC and DISM on your machine? Trying them might help and it's also something good to do periodically with Windows 10 anyway. If you run these and they finish without error then at least you know Windows is pretty healthy and can diagnose elsewhere. Unfortunately, right now you are chasing a ghost and everything you can eliminate as a possible culprit allows you to move on to the next thing to try. 

https://www.howtogeek.com/222532/how-to-repair-corrupted-windows-system-files-with-the-sfc-and-dism-...

[Anonymous]

That helped, thank you.However, this was first reported in the 2018 Beta. 
I have spent hours troubleshooting this, including a full system reinstall before christmas, and scared to not being able to hand in my projects.
I understand bugs must be prioritised, but surely this  could have gotten a fix?
it costs users time 😞

Having said that, I do, as mentioned appreciate the assist, it helped, and I know where to look if it happens again

Edit to add:
1: This is a clean install on a new SSD from two weeks ago.
2: Max is the only application behaving like this
3: This happens in one of two instances: Max is open when new application is installed, OR Max is open when you reboot, new application is installed and you just let taskman shut down Max
So - I dont think I am chasing ghosts, I am chasing a Max specific behaviour, where the variable is the #state of Max at the time of install when the qt path variable may or may not be added. 
Last time I had this issue was on a clean install because i could not get it to work - I installed Norton, and boom! Max went to hell
I treated myself to a new SSD two weeks ago, which is why I am able to pinpoint the behaviours so specifically, the machine hasn't been fileld up with a year's junk yet 😉

[RobH2]

Ok, understood. At least some good things are starting to happen. 

[brentscannell]

In all honesty, in the 2018 beta timeline we weren't exactly sure why this was happening. It was actually another member of this community who tracked down the root cause after installing a plugin for photoshop that tipped us off about the rogue environment variable last November. We discussed with our product support teams and believed this to be a somewhat isolated case, but after I saw your post this morning I pinged one of our UI devs to see if we can take a closer look at "immunizing" ourselves against this particular variable. I'll report back as soon as I hear that we've made progress 🙂

[Anonymous]

I saw that post - Topaz was the culprit.
In my case, I can now verify it IS the installation of software that does it - I actually thought the second time it happened it was a Norton/Max issue because that's known. And I'd just not bothered uninstalling everything Norton, so thats why i figured things just did not work.
But when I installed MD on Saturday and got the same issue, and Norton was nowhere to be found on my new drive, then I figured it was a software installation issue - that a flag was set somewhere Max did not like. 
It just never struck me to hit the environment variables, instead, I scrubbed my entire machine of adsk components and did a reinstall - got the same result.
So I can verify the Topaz issue - it was in the link you added - and that it's an issue that spans several applications, not just Topaz.
It also needs to be said I am running a few standalone Topaz plugins in PS and MAx behaved fine with these. It was the install of MD and the reboot I think "killed" me in this instance, but the removal of the variable helps.