Hi Guys

i have a user who is using windows 7 64bit with the latest version of XSI. The software keeps freezing when he opens the application or tries to load anything from a database.

Has any one had any problems with Windows 7?

Or have any ideas how to resolve the issue?

So sometimes Softimage does not freeze at startup (since he can sometimes try to open a scene file) ?

When it freezes, what is going on in the Task Manager? eg cpu and memory usage of xsi.exe ?

Do you have to kill the xsi.exe process?

Does xsibatch freeze too?
Try this

echo LogMessage( “hello” ) > hello.js
xsibatch -script hello.js

Mine freezes too. When I undo, redo and save a lot my memory consumption shoots way up to 100%. I have Softimage 7.5 x64 on Windows 7 x64. I have also tried out softimage 7.01 and softimage 2010 but both of them have the same problem. Any solution. My Rig has 4 gigs of system memory.

Does this happen in any scene, or just a specific scene?
Try with one of the example scenes.

Did you freeze the operator stack?

StephenBlair 27 November 2009 06:55 AM

Does this happen in any scene, or just a specific scene?
Try with one of the example scenes.

Did you freeze the operator stack?

Hi! Stephen. This 100% memory consumption issue is happening in a modeling scene that I have started a few days ago. And since this is the first time I am modeling in Softimage, I am unable to say if this happens in every scene or only in this particular scene. Do I have to freeze everything? Normally whenever Softimage consumes about 90% memory I restart it. But today I was working until it ate everything and when there was nothing left a message popped up saying something like this “ softimage xsi cannot assign contiguous memory....it may not work properly from now”, I can’t clearly remember the displayed message. I’ve hit the print screen button to capture it, but sadly the captured screen was not the one I was expecting(maybe because the system was exhausted). And a bit later Softimage crashed and I had to Kill the process from task manager. I’ll test if this happens with the example scene.

Thanks FalconCrest. I will now check the resource monitor for any diagnosis and let you know if I’ve found any solution.

4 gig of RAM is not a lot for 64-bit.  Normally for 64-bit you should use 6 gig (i7) or 8 gig.
The OS is actually larger than 32-bit.

If you’re running out of RAM, the software may apear to freeze, but what’s happening is that the OS is swapping like crazy.  In that case, the whole computer can become unresponsive, even the mouse can freeze.  It’s easy to forget that it can be caused by swapping.

The error message you got from Softimage is that it couldn’t allocate a large block of memory.

If you have large textures, above 2048x2048, this might be the reason.

If the software appears to freeze in the open dialog, this is usually because you have a drive letter mapped to a share that is down.  Disconnect from the network drive to fix the problem

luceric 04 December 2009 11:18 PM

4 gig of RAM is not a lot for 64-bit.  Normally for 64-bit you should use 6 gig (i7) or 8 gig.
The OS is actually larger than 32-bit.


If you’re running out of RAM, the software may apear to freeze, but what’s happening is that the OS is swapping like crazy.  In that case, the whole computer can become unresponsive, even the mouse can freeze.  It’s easy to forget that it can be caused by swapping.


The error message you got from Softimage is that it couldn’t allocate a large block of memory.

If you have large textures, above 2048x2048, this might be the reason.

If the software appears to freeze in the open dialog, this is usually because you have a drive letter mapped to a share that is down.  Disconnect from the network drive to fix the problem

Hi luceric, thank you for trying to help me. Yeah, I know 4 gig of R.A.M is the minimum requirement for 64-bit OS. But at this rate I doubt that even 8 gig would be sufficient. Each time I press save, undo or redo the memory gets consumed by 1% increment.

And I would like to inform you that I don’t have any textures in my scene yet, the scene contains just the model.

Softimage doesn’t freeze in the open dialog box. Also, I don’t have a network drive.

Create a new scene and then create one of the default models. For example, the elephant. If that is not heavy enought, create multiple elephants, or subdivide it until you have a comparable number of polygons in this scene (comparable to your own scene).

Then starting saving, editing, undoing and redoing. Do you get the same memory problem ?

Hi! FalconCrest. I did FREEZE M but the problem still exists.

Hi! StephenBlair. I opened some of the example files(chair, dog) and moved some vertices on those models and sadly the same thing happened yet again.

Does this have anything to do with “Windows Virtual Memory” ?

I think I’ll reinstall the OS or perhaps switch to Vista to see if that solves this issue.

Thanks guys you have been very supportive.

So, you haven’t giving up on me yet, eh :)