We just got 2 new machines with dual hex-core xeon processors with hyper threading turned on, task manager shows 24 processors / cores / threads. max 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 all crashes as soon as it trys to load the mentalray plugin. if we turned off hyper threading, showing only 12 threads, then it loads fine. our other machines, dual quad core xeons with 16 threads. is fine. it leads us to believe that mental ray maxes out at 16 threads? we’ve also heard that hair / fur plugin also have the same problem. as well as fume. we’ve contacted fume and they are going to provide us with a beta that goes up to 32 threads. can mental ray do the same? as we are dependent on that renderer. as we all know that intel is pushing out 8 core processors and amd already has a 12 core......

Try renaming this file to 3dsmaxhair.dll.old:
Autodesk\3ds Max 2011\mentalimages\shaders_standard\mentalray\shaders\3dsmaxhair.dll

Max should now start as expected.

Autodesk are aware of the problem, and I assume that they are working on a solution for it.

Dave

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