For some time now I had been having problems using Atmospherics I really cant say when or why. But this morning I decided to open up a new scene blank of course and had just clicked on the HELPERS tab and inserted the and clicked on atmospherics then clicked on CYLGIZMO then just put it down in the center of the blank screen then after making it a random size I then clicked on the SET-UP tab and the error message came up and the program shut down. Can any one give me some help as to what is wrong?

Prog: 3Ds Max 2008 w/all updates installed
OS: Win XP/Pro
Sysyem: Dell Precision 370
Pentiom 4 2.79Hz
2Gb RAM
2 Internal Drives
2 External drives
3 Optical drives
Dual Mon
Nvidea 7600GT dual mode

Following your instructions exactly suggests you hadn’t actually added an effect to setup?

Either way, the above functions perfectly here. Clicking Setup (with or without an effect) either does nothing or works as expected.

Try renaming your Maxstart.max if you have one, followed by renaming your 3dsmax.ini (Max will create a new clean one).

Max 4.2 through 2014, Composite 2014.
XP-64 (SP2).
nVidia 9800GTX+ (512MB) (Driver 314.22).
i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

It may also be helpful to know what the error said.

3ds Max Design 2012 64-bit - Subscription Advantage Pack / PU10
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA