Maya 2014 hangs at start

[Anonymous]

Installed on HP Z220 Workstation, Core i5, 8GB RAM, Quadro 600.

Maya installs fine, program will not start. Maya.exe and quicktimeshim.exe are executed and running processes but nothing ever appears on screen. no errors, nothing in event viewer indicating a problem.  Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

The program seems to be hanging after quicktimeshim.exe is launched.  If I remove it from Maya2014\bin\ Maya seems to load just fine.  what is quicktimeshim?  Is it essential.  I don't use this software, just installing it in a lab for students.

[warnold1]

Apple QuickTime library is 32 bit
This shim program is a bridge from Maya 64 bit to QuickTime 32 bit

If you don't use QuickTime video you don't need the shim

[Anonymous]

Hi.  I'm new to this site but I'm facing a pretty severe problem after installing Maya 2015.  We have Maya 2014 installed on all of our workstations and render farm, but after installing Maya 2015 it appears that our 2014 installs are broken with this error.  What can I do to fix this?  Some of our users need to use the quicktime features.

[Anonymous]

quicktimeshim is not needed.

[Anonymous]

I am having this same problem for Maya 2015. Some users have indicated that removing quicktimeShim.exe from Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2014/bin/ will fix the problem (in Maya2014), but it didn't fix the problem for me in 2015. Other users have said re-installing quicktime fixed the problem in Maya2014, but I tried that too (and replaced the quicktimeShim.exe) and that fails as well. Anybody have any solutions for Maya 2015? 

Here are the things I have tried:

1. Remove quicktimeShim.exe, run Maya, it hangs at startup but doesn't complain about quicktimeShim.exe, kill Maya

2. Reboot PC, run Maya, it hangs at startup but doesn't complain about quicktimeShim.exe, kill maya

3. Downloaded Quicktime installer, ran it, it did not offer option to re-install, but offered to REPAIR install, ran repair, ran Maya, still hung, killed Maya, realized I probably needed to put the quicktimeShim.exe back where it was, did so, ran again, still hung, rebooted just in case, ran Maya, still hung

4. Re-ran the Quicktime installer and selected the Uninstall Quicktime option, after uninstall I removed the quicktimeShim.exe file again, rebooted just in case, ran Maya, still hung, killed it

5. Re-ran the Quicktime installer and this time since it had been removed, it offered to allow a new install, Installed Quicktime, tried Maya without and then with the quicktimeShim replaced and both hung 

This was a brand new install of Maya2015, so I don't see much point in removing and reinstalling, it should end up right where I was before I installed it, but I suppose that is the next step. 

Anybody have any other ideas? Autodesk, why have you not addressed this problem in 2015, since it was a known issue in 2014???

[warnold1]

knowing where Maya is hung would go a long way to knowing why it is hanging.

if you have Visual Studio installed on the machine attempt to attach to the maya.exe process and see if the call stack has any info.  the debug info is not shipped with Maya, so it may be sparse.  

else may be able to create a mini-dump file that could be placed somewhere accessible.   mini-dump files can be large.

would need to know the version of maya

does Maya launch in batch mode ?    mayabatch.exe -prompt

anything in the Maya log directories

c:\flexlm

in temp directories ?

set environoment variable  FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3 before running Maya

set FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3

maya.exe -prompt

is there anything in the taskbar ?  Maya Output Window 

[Anonymous]

I also downloaded the 2015 updates/patches from Autodesk, installed them, rebooted and tried Maya. It still hangs. I even waited 20 minutes and it never got beyond the splash screen that says "Maya loading". 

I also tried running Maya as ADMINISTRATOR because a different thread said that solved a licensing problem they were having because Maya periodically needed to access some files that needed admin access. I did so in case something it was trying to access needed to be admin. But it still hangs. So I am out of ideas again. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tips. You posted these while I was adding an update to my post, so just saw them. I will see if I can do any of the things you suggested. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks warnold,

I opened a cmd window, navigated to c:\program files\autodesk\Maya2015\bin\ and executed the mayabatch.exe -prompt command. That resulted in some outputs in the terminal window, but I did not see Maya appear or start up. It is not present on the task bar. I looked in Task Manager and is shows mayabatch.exe running using 307 MB of memory. My guess is that it is hung up, but I don't know how to tell for sure. Note sure what was supposed to happen when I ran it. 

Here is the output from the terminal:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin>mayabatch.exe -prompt
Initialized VP2.0 renderer {
Version : 5.3.1.100. Feature Level 4.
Adapter : AMD FirePro M4000
Vendor ID: 4098. Device ID : 26669
Driver : atig6pxx.dll.dll:9.3.3.3000.
API : OpenGL V.2.
Max texture size : 16384 * 16384.
Max tex coords : 16
Shader versions supported (Vertex: 4, Geometry: 4, Pixel 4).
Shader compiler profile : (Best card profile)
Active stereo support available : 0
GPU Memory Limit : 1024 MB.
CPU Memory Limit: 15499.8 MB.
}
mental ray for Maya 2015
mental ray: version 3.12.1.12, Feb 1 2014, revision 213714
1 error generated.
Error while processing C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\plug-ins\bifrost\db\presets\__rootincludeall__.h.
Result: untitled
mel:

The final line seems to be waiting for an input in the Maya Embedded Language, but I don't know MEL, so I don't know what to type to see if it is running. 

It did get an error in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\plug-ins\bifrost\db\presets\__rootincludeall__.h.  but I don't have any idea what that means. 

Thanks

[Anonymous]

I looked for c:\flexlm  but there doesn't appear to be one. I also opened a cmd terminal and did a dir listing from there in case it was hidden, but still didn't see it. I could not find anything in any Windows temp folders or files either. 

[Anonymous]

My guess at this point is that all the uninstalling and reinstalling and maya updates has fixed the initial problem I was having with the quicktime file, because that message doesn't come up when I run now. So it may be getting past that and hanging at some other point. 

[warnold1]

mayabatch.exe is a command line interface, yes asking for input.   quit -f    will exit

indicates that Maya is installed, and looks like it can initialize the graphic card.

can you try

maya -prompt 

this should open a terminal window with Maya command line.     quit -f  to close it.

[warnold1]

the stack trace is the most interesting data point if possible

[Anonymous]

warnold, 

I opened a cmd terminal and executed 

c:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin>maya.exe -prompt

This opened another window titled maya.exe -prompt. That window wouldn't let me select or copy the text, so incuded a screen grab of it below. It accepted the quit -f and closed as expected. 

[Anonymous]

BTW warnold, I did set environoment variable  FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3 before running Maya

set FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3

maya.exe -prompt

You asked: "is there anything in the taskbar ?  Maya Output Window "

I am not sure I am seeing this. In the "Windows" task bar, I see the regular icons plus the Maya.exe icon. Since the GUI for maya is not opening, there is not taskbar or anything on maya itself to look for info. The terminal running the maya.exe -prompt just displays the info I pasted in the screen capture in my previous post. I don't see any other "maya output window". 

I do have visual studio on my machine, but don't know how to attach maya as a process. I will have to google that and see if I can figure it out. 

[warnold1]

quick start:

  start Visual Studio

  start Maya

once Maya is hung, using Visual Studio  from the top level Debug menu use the Attach Process menu item.  will open the list of running tasks. find maya.exe and select it.    Will then load the modules.  there are no pdb files included in the installation so there will be no debug info to show nice names.    symbols are available from  Autodesk Developer Network  (ADN)

once loaded, there is the debugger "VCR" controls   click on the "pause/break"  icon to break Maya

in the thread window should see the threads that are running, and the stack trace in another window for each thread

hopeing that the module names would give indication of where in the initialization Maya is.

Is your system Locale   "US"  english ?     some locale and special characters in user's home directory have caused issues in the past

[Anonymous]

The environment variable change must have taken a while to take effect. When I tried to run Maya 2015 this time, it did open an output window. The only output was: 

Checkout succeeded: MAYA_F_S/0D7B 3E2C 38CD 8385
License file:
No server used

This didn't tell me much. It looks like it succeeded in checking something out. Don't know if it means the maya program ran a check on my system and everything "checked out" or if it means it was successful in "Checking Out" a license or something. I am guessing it is the latter, because the 4 sets of numbers after the MAYA_F_S/ looks like maybe a license code in hexidecimal? 

The "License file" seems to be no output or blank. Not sure if that means it didn't find one or what?

I am running Maya locally on a U.S. English language laptop, not on a remote server, so my guess is that is why is says "no server used", but again, that is just a guess. 

[Anonymous]

Hi warnold, 

This is a newer laptop, about 8 months old. I had the full up Visual Studio loaded on my old one by rarely used it and don't know much about it. I forgot that was on my old laptop. This new one had an icon to run Visual Studio 2010 Express, but it looks like it was not really "installed", because it downloaded Express and I had to tell it which language. C++ is the only one I have any background in, so I selected Visual C++ 2010 Express. I had to go to Microsoft and get a key for it, so it is definitely a new install. Upon running it, I am given a start page and the debug menu only gives me the option to view the Options and Settings. 

I fear this Express version may not have the capability to attach the running process as you described, but I am not sure. Sorry I am such a newbie at all these different things. 

[Anonymous]

Don't really know what I am doing, but I created a new project in Visual C++ 2010 Express to see if that would give me different Debug options. I named the project debut maya. This created a Debug Maya.h

I then looked at the Debug menu and it did give me more options, but there are no attach options. 

So maybe my quess was correct and it won't let me attach a process to debug it in 2010 Express? 

Here are the options it gives me: