If I kill hkey.exe, it continues and finishes the installation. But after that I cannot start Houdini, since it halts again at loading hkey.exe.
I've tried all the advice I could find on this board (updated drivers, opened ports, disabled firewall/antivirus, changed environment variables, install with admin rights) but with no results. Neither did I get any errors.
I run XP 32 bit SP3 with an AMD 3400+ processor. 1 gig mem and a ATI HD3850 agp card.
But anyhow, although I have ran linux in the past I'm not gonna change OS now because some… why am I trying to justify my self? Your solution is just as silly as saying, if Houdini doesn't install stick to Blender.
edward So what happens when you try to open launch the License Administrator (from Start Menu > Side Effects > …)
First of all thank you for your time.
When I start license administrator the same thing happens, hkey.exe starts up but halts eventually. I forgot to say that I do have the hserver.exe running, so that wouldn't be the problem. And also running hkey or houdini through the command console doesn't change a thing.
I wish it gave some error, I think there's something really specific to my setup going wrong.
If you've turned off antivirus, bittorrent, firewall, and other background (or windowing) programs that might be interfering, then the only thing I can think of is video card related. However, you've also said that setting environment variable HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE to 1 makes no difference? If it's a video card related issue, then doing that (on Windows) should at least make *some* difference.
Since you're on an AMD processor, I guess you should also try setting the following environment variables to 1: HOUDINI_DISABLE_CPUID HOUDINI_DISABLE_MMX HOUDINI_DISABLE_XMMX HOUDINI_DISABLE_SSE HOUDINI_DISABLE_3DNOW
I even deinstalled my virus app, put my machine in dmz on my router. Reinstalled houdini while having set all the advised environment variables, put still the same problem. Hkey starts and nothing happens besides having hkey.exe running in the background with about 30meg mem usage.
I must be cursed or something.
Is there any way to retrieve the install log or any logs that might give some new info?
You could try obtaining stack traces out of hkey if you have a debugger installed (eg. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx). [microsoft.com] It's a somewhat complicated process though: - Attach to hkey.exe using your debugger - Bring up the Threads Window - Bring up the call stack window - Capture the contents of the call stack window for all threads in hkey.exe.
Thanks!! I found out that there was a problem with loading wintab.dll which in my case is obvious because I currently don't have a tablet installed. But the driver and service was running in the background.
Thanks for helping out, now I finally can checkout Houdini.
I tried what you did using winDbg and first it seemed hkey kept complaining about wintab.dll having a wrong checksum.
I remembered that wintab.dll was a library for my tablet drivers, so I wondered what hkey had to do with this dll besides checking for a tablet. So seeing that I didn't have my tablet connected and these drivers where originally very buggy, I thought it would be worth a try to deinstall the faulty drivers.
But let's just say I didn't precisely knew what I was doing, but common sense and your help finally got me there.
right?
