Render.exe wont run on MDT deployed Machines

[CADATruemax]

Hi Everyone,

I recently took over as IT at a school. I'm fairly novice in the IT admin field.

When i started the deployment was made by simply cloning harddrives. I read about it, and was pretty sure this wasn't the right way to do things.

So i learned to use MDT and started deploying large images for the students, we have A LOT of Softwares for VFX.
Everything has been working great, but Autodesk have been a challenge in general with permissions etc. but i got it to run.

I'm now facing the issue when trying to setup a renderfarm, that the Render.exe file from the Autodesk Maya directory simply wont run (Just opens and closes, withouth info) on all the machines that i imaged. However it works on the few old machines i didn't touch.

I tried reinstalling maya from scratch to no help. I tried running the .exe as admin and still doesn't work. I'm looking for your guys great expertise, because i am unsure if the problem is due to my imaging. Am i missing something essential here? I've had many issues with autodesk software after using deployment, and can see i'm not the only one on the forum.

I've tried all i can.

Thank you for your time! Hope it makes sense, else feel free to ask if you want something elaborated further.

[Stephen.Blair]

Get a Process Monitor log from a working machine and compare it with a Process Monitor log from one of these MDT-deployed machines

[CADATruemax]

Hi Stephen,

Thank you, will certainly try that. 

Never used this before, but can see that it's showing me hundred of thousands of things. Am i looking for some process in particular?

[CADATruemax]

I've got the two logs, seperated Render.exe actions, any chance you want to look at them, i finding it very difficult too find where it goes wrong.

[Stephen.Blair]

sure, I'll take a look

[CADATruemax]

Hi Stephen,

Thank you for your time, have attached the two logs.

[Stephen.Blair]

I'll try, but CSV is not the best. I should have said "PML format please"

With PML I can use Process Monitor tools to filter and review

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

It's probably ngskintools. 

One Arnold customer told me he had to remove that plugin to get Render to work.

And here's another report of the same problem:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/render-exe-not-working-maya-2018/m-p/8785581/highlight/tru...

[CADATruemax]

I tried uninstalling NGskintools, still wont render. 

Is there a way to make sure maya have nothing left of skintools in its system?

[CADATruemax]

Just installed NGskintools on the working PC, now it doesn't work. So you are right, it's NGskintools! 

Now i need to find out how to remove it, cause uninstall didn't help.

[Stephen.Blair]

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@CADATruemax wrote:

I tried uninstalling NGskintools, still wont render. 

Is there a way to make sure maya have nothing left of skintools in its system?

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Remove this folder: 

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ngskintools

[CADATruemax]

Its working!!! Had to install again on the imaged machine and then delete it. 

Can't describe how happy i am for your help Stephen!