Carrara won't load anything anymore
argus1000
Posts: 701
Just as I was terminating the first draft of my new movie (months of work, 30 minutes long), I find that either versions of Carrara 8.5 (build 19 and 243) won't load anything anymore. It either gives me an error message or a little mysterious window (see pic). Needless to say, I re-installed both programs. No change. Even when I try to load a simple cube, it gives me an error message. All my other programs work. What's going on? Any ideas? Thanks.
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Post edited by argus1000 on
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Comments
Does it start on a new scene ?
If so, have you tried to import a .car file ?
Yes, it starts on a new scene. Importing a .CAR file is the same as opening one. No joy.
Is it just your scenes or all scenes? Do they contain Octane render data or other plugin data?
I had similar issue when used OR4C 3 beta and saved a file but not now with update
You can prob remove the Octane render data in notepad
Yes, none of my scenes open. I only have Octane installed im the build 19 of Carrara 8.5. Not in the 243 build. It doesn't make a difference. NONE of my scenes open.
Have you installed anything new,..
That error box pic,.doesn't look like anything from Carrara or Windows,.
is the error loading a cube primitive or importing an obj?
maybe try moving extensions folder and reinstall?
Not that I remember. But in the "Restore" window, they say Direct X was installed yesterday. Should I restore?
It was a cube primitive. But the same thing happens when I try to import the cube as an OBJ: Carrara freezes.
I did that. I uninstalled the build 243 and re-installed it in another folder, so that it uses only the default extensions. No change. For the build 19, it installs itself through Install Manager only to the program files folder.
Try resetting preferences.
Select File|Reset Preferences.
When the preference file gets corrupt, Carrara gets all kinds of squirelly.
Regards,
I did that too.
Let me see if I understand the situation:
- You can launch Carrara with no problem.
- You can open a new scene, and insert a cube.
- You can save the scene with the cube as a Carrara file.
- But you cannot reopen that same file without an error or freeze.
Is that Correct?
Unfortunately I'm not a Windows user so I can't give you file specific information. But If I were troubleshooting this problem on my Mac, here's what I'd try.
You say that you have already cleanly reinstalled Carrara 8.5.0.234 into a new location where it should not be accessing any of the previous installation's plug-ins or other add ons. But it still fails. That really makes me think that it's a corrupted Preferences file. You see, both Carrara 8.5.0.234 and Carrara 8.5.1.19 use the same preferences file (on the Mac, and I assume on Windows too). If something goes wrong with this file it will affect both versions.
You said that you have already used the "Reset Preferences" command under the File menu. But I think that doesn't always work to fix corruption. If you can locate and delete the current Preferences file (while Carrara is not running) it will be rebuilt the next time that you run Carrara.
On the Mac OS the file is named "Preferences.txt" and it gets written to every time that you Quit Carrara. By checking the date and time stamp on the file, you can determine if you are looking at the current Preferences file and not a leftover from an older version of Carrara. If you're not sure, just rename the file rather than deleting it, so you can change it back if it wasn't the problem.
Good luck.
Yeah, I can't remember (or find) where it is on Windows 10. There are a few things that bother me about this whole situation, one being the comment that DIM installed it to Program Files, as if this was a bad thing... where else would it install it to?
There are often warnings related to running several version of the same software on the same machine - being recemmended only to advanced users. When thinks go completely south, I just uninstall everything, and then try and manually clean up residual files left over - like preferences and such.
Something ceratinly has changed - and I really feel bad for Argus here. It's so hard to figure out this sort of thing without being a GeekSquad hard-case having remote access to exactly what the computer has been up to before and after the problem occurred.
Just out of curiosity (and this might not matter anyways), have you tried deleting everything from the Temp folder? That's something I make a practice of doing fairly often anyways... just because. I don't remember who said to do that, but since I've read it, I've been doing it - fairly often.
On my tower, I have a special hard drive that I use as a Temp Folder/Scratch Disk drive. Just a drive that I've replaced with a newer one.
Also, you've just mentioned in another thread that you're running a Server-class machine... could any of that (networking type of things) have been changed? Do you, perhaps, have some runtimes on a certain drive, and that has now been swapped, relocated, or perhaps it's not working properly anymore?
There are "Geek" sorts of services out there whom we can pay to have them access our machines remotely and correct what's wrong with them. Perhaps something like that can help?
I can open Carrara but, as soon as I insert a cube primitive (or open any file for that matter), I get an error message and Carrara freezes.
As far as the preferences file goes, I tried to delete it, but Carrara beheaves the same. Thanks anyway.
Thanks for reminding me. There is a service in my city who can read my screen remotely. I'll have to try them. BTW, where is Carrara's temp file?
It may also be related to the microsoft visual runtime version and if using opengl or software preview, I have had odd stuff happen in programs with those errors that affected other stuff,
CCleaner and or control panel programs and features should tell you what ones you have installed.
In Preferences, we can see where it's set. On my tower (which has my separate internal drives), I set this to a separate drive altogether - I seek out the scratch dish/tep folder location for all of my software, and set them up to use that same drive. Very convenient and helps the software be more efficient. A tip I've learnt from this forum back when we still had the old forum - I can't remember who.
So... why the different versions of Carrara, may I ask? Even more specifically, why more than one version of Carrara 8.5?
There may very well be a problem between having both of them. I know it doesn't sound right, but I do recall that there were a lot of changes going on between the the last few betas - and not much of a difference between the final beta and the official. But some of that had to do with the use of Valentia and then the use of Postgre. Perhaps having both installed at the same time is asking too much on something?
I'm just off on a limb asking this stuff.
I used to keep 7, 8 and 8.5 on my machine at the same time simply because others were doing it. When I realized that I don't really like 8 or especially 7 compared to 8.5, especially trying to open an 8.5 scene or object in 8 or earlier... I finally just got rid of 8 and 7. I still have their installers saved in my backup drive, but keeping them installed just wasted my PCs logic.
I'm no computer Geek, but a real Geek once told me that the more stuff we have installed makes a difference on the performance of the machine - even though we're not running it all together. It clutters space and registry and asks the OS to keep track of more than it needs to. So he told me that, on my Carrara machine, try to only have installed what I actually need for that machine - nothing else.
I don't get quite as extreme as he suggested, but I always try to heed his advice.
I have 3 versions all working fine, 8.5.0.243 8.5.1.19 public beta and 8.1.1
first has OR4C 2 and all my third party plugins
second OR4C 3 and a few plugins
third is for rigging and weightpainting as it sucks in 8.5, my own stuff and imported meshes
Oh only used DIM for second and I manually install everything otherwise
Also from a non-Geek whom has had to try and 'fix' things, this has always worked for me - so far.
A bit of background: Since I've had to do this once, I've decided to never throw away my hard drives as I replace them. Instead, I bought a box that I can plug them into to turn them into extarnal usb drives - that box supports both SATA and the other IDE (or whatever they're called) drives - so I have a stack of them.
I use these no-longer-in-use drives to store multiple copies of backups of things that I never want to lose - mostly my Daz3d stuff.
I have one such drive inside my Carrara tower - the one I mentioned above - used as a scratch disc/temp file folder location drive. That drive also houses a snapshot of my Carrara 8.5 installation folder from Program Files. It's old now, but it would still get me a LOT closer to having Carrara installed the way it is now, than if I just started from scratch via my Daz3d account. It's a solid, working version with all of my plugins installed.
I also like to keep all of my installers for all of my needed software on those drives as well.
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All of that said, when things get too caterwonky on me, I perform the good ol' Windows refresh, and just wipe everything away for a fresh start.
I know that the thought can be dreadful, but as long as the rest of Windows seems to be working properly, it's a good time to start saving away all of the scene and object files, runtimes, everything. For me this can takes several days of storing and contemplation.
Windows loves a good reinstall too - so I often notice huge performance boosts from such a move.
Just sayin'
If you've never cleared the DazTmp folder, it might be possible that you have reached a limit on the drive that is on. It tries to write a new temp file, there is no room, so it genertaes an error and can't go any further. Simply clearing the DazTmp folder may sort it. It tends to accumulate a huge amount of rubbish over time, so it is always worth periodically clearing it.
your daz temp folder should be in :
My Documents / Daz3D / DazTmp
NOTE: this folder should be cleared out "regularly" .... once a week,.. if you use carrara daily. ..or any time after using carrara.
it should really be able to clear it's own temporary files,. like most other programs.
I doubt that dirext x is the problem, but it's always a possibility. ... you could roll back to the previous direct-x driver, to test that theory,.
I have Windows 7 with C6, C7, C8, C8.5 and both 32 and 64bit versions installed ,. with no issues loading or saving files.
Phil, you were mostly right. I just noticed that my drive E was full. (I keep my programs on my flash drice C). So I made some space and also cleared Carrara's Tmp file. No go. Same problem.
I also tried to "restore" my C drive, but Windows couldn't do this successfully. So what remains is a drastic mesasure, but that seems necessary: RE-INSTALL WINDOWS. It is a pain, because I'll have to re-install all my programs. But I'll have a clean system.
Thanks all of you guys for the tips.
Would you beleive? I re-installed windows and Carrara still can't load any files. I'm in communication with Daz support at this point.
Oh dear - i hope you get it sorted soon.