Everytime I open Maya, all my preferences are deleted/reset. Can anyone help me with this issue?

Just found that I get this error when saving preferences. I run Maya on administrator so it can’t be access…

saveShelf General “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_General”;
// Error: Can’t open the file: D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_General //
saveShelf Surfaces “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Surfaces”;
// Error: Can’t open the file: D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Surfaces //
saveShelf Polygons “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons”;
// Error: Can’t open the file: D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons //
// Warning: Failed to save D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_General.mel.  Check write permission //
// Warning: Failed to save D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Surfaces.mel.  Check write permission //
// Warning: Failed to save D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/shelves/shelf_Polygons.mel.  Check write permission //
// Warning: Save of “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/userPrefs.mel” failed //
// Warning: Save of “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/windowPrefs.mel” failed //
// Warning: Save of “D://maya/2012-x64/prefs/pluginPrefs.mel” failed //
// Warning: Not all preferences were saved. See Script Editor for details. //

Perhaps try renaming your My Documents/maya/2012 directory (to something like 2012_bak) while Maya is not running and starting Maya again? This should set the default factory preferences if the preferences somehow got corrupted. Perhaps see if there is anything else unusual on the maya (or My Documents directory) such as being read only that would prevent the writes.

Game Programmer/Technical Artist: http://michaelhubbard.ca

@sabareesh - I do not know what the env variable is.

@michaelhubbard - The issue could possibly be the my documents directory as I changed the location from my C: to D: drive to avoid my C: getting too large.

Is there anyway to force maya to save preferences somewhere else?

If you have changed from the default installs, you could try setting some of the Maya.env to your new path and see if that helps (i.e. add the following to Maya.env and change the C: to D:)

(username is your username directory).

It is possible that setting a user environment variable for MAYA_APP_DIR to your new D: path would also resolve the problem (if Maya can’t find the documents path). The link is for XP but should work for other windows versions: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310519.

I can’t recall if Maya gives you the option on setting the documents path on install, but I imagine that a reinstall (if this option exists) could also solve the problem.

Game Programmer/Technical Artist: http://michaelhubbard.ca