Q. Houdini is crashing or freezing on launch. What do I do?

A. Many of these issues can be solved simply by updating your graphics driver. For ATI you need 8.44 or higher. For NVIDIA you need 169 or higher. Once you have a workstation graphics card installed with the latest driver, Houdini should start up without any problem.

(this is a bug that we're working on, but in the meantime, there ya go)

No luck with 32bit Vista SP1, E8200 and GeForce 9600GT with drivers 175.19 (latest WHQL available). Houdini (Apprentice 9.5.170) gets frozen every time I try to add any primitive to the scene.

Documentation launching in background totally slow - like 30 seconds until anything is displayed.

Maybe you'll need to rollback to a previous driver. I'm having some of the same issues with my NVidia drivers and i'm using an 8800 GFX card.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13011 [sidefx.com]

Bummer. Wish I had noticed this before I downloaded the latest version. I wanted to see how the program worked/looked before buying the HD.

Not only does Houdini lock up, it totally crashes my computer on startup. I have the latest Nvidiea drivers and this is a brand new system I have just finished building, so everything has the latest drivers.

Also, running in SLI mode.


So, I will take it this has not been fixed yet, is there a fix, an earlier version that works?

Well looks like I had to roll back on my drivers. It seems that 177,9 Nvidia affects more than just Houdini, all my 3D applications stopped working, from Blender to Torque constructor.

So, downloaded and runs. May purchase if I can transfer my animations to Torque.

I'm having the same problem with my nVidia drivers.
Houdini complains that I need updated drivers (Higher then XX version).
But I DO have the latest drivers.
Sure I have an old card but it wasn't a problem until the last time I had to re-install houdini (HDD crash)

Well, there's two things that can be happening here, Trenatos:
1. You have an old graphics card such that its latest version is older than the required driver. Which video driver version are you using?
2. Houdini misdetected your video driver version. So double-check what Houdini is complaining about against what version you know your video driver is. If you do indeed have a newer video driver, then updating to the latest Houdini build should fix the problem.

Windows and linux driver has different series, for example, in windows the last drivers is 176, in linux 173.

In linux 100.14.19 driver version is perfect, I think … but is a few old.

What is the official opinion from SideFX for linux ?

On Linux, 100.14.19 is a very solid driver. I recently updated to the 173 series, and they seem stable, though slightly more sluggish both on my desktop and Houdini. Somewhat subjectively observed, though.

Yeah, I'll second that, 173.14.12 here for both 32 and 64 bit and so far nothing has crashed and burned, which has been a rarity for more leading edge NVidia drivers of late. I haven't tried 19, but my attitude has been if it ain't broke and it's got a fairly recent feature set…

I too will add an anecdotal comment that the desktop seems just a hair slower.

Cheers,

J.C.

Guess I need to reply back the crashing and freezing on mine has been eliminated. Turns out my graphics cards are overclocked and I needed to add some more voltage to my DDR3 memory. Problem solved, and I must admit, seems like a new system.

For me I am back to the BETA Nvidia drivers.

Same issue … Houdini 9.5.230 apprentice froze first with my quickcam driver (fixed it by disabling the service), then randomly crash for no reason when clicking on menu ~ unusable when you are trying to learn a software. Sad since XSI 7.0 60 days demo works just fine. I'm running on Vista x86 Sp1, Intel 8200 with a 8800GTS 177.92 driver.

I am trying to install apprentice. I have an almost new computer (Boxx dual quad) with all latest drivers on windows x64. Geforce. Only trying to open houdini and my computer freezes completely. I never saw any software acting like that. What a mess! I tried few months ago to install houdini too and the UI was always disappearing.

I am a user of Maya Max and XSI and never had any problem like that with these other apps.

I would like to become a user of Houdini too.But it seems it is not compatible with my Boxx workstation.

Hello Strob,

I can see why this would be frustrating, however, do bear in mind that many many people are running houdini on a daily basis, with a very similar configuration to what you describe.

Also note that each application (in your case, Max, Maya, XSI) will attempt to communicate with the machine in it's own way, possibly exposing a weakness somewhere. Just because one application is happy, doesn't imply that they all should be. (well, they all SHOULD be, but you know… :wink: )

That said, if the entire computer freezes, I would tend to have a serious look at the video drivers. It's very rare these days that an app can bring down the entire OS.

You didn't mention what video drivers you were running. I've had issues with 180.48 so bad that I had to roll back to the 178 series.

Hope this helps.

G

It crashes to me too. When finishing installation i already got an error about hkey.exe.
Then anytime i want to start the app i get the same eroor. hkey.exe

I am on xpPro 32bit, and have ad Nvidia 7600GT (i think this should be enought for this app). I went ot the nvidia website and upgraded the drivers but it still doesn't work.

Here's the screenshot of what i got when istalling the app:
http://www.shrani.si/f/o/E1/4u1woy4l/houdini.jpg [shrani.si]

chrism
Q. Houdini is crashing or freezing on launch. What do I do?

A. Many of these issues can be solved simply by updating your graphics driver. For ATI you need 8.44 or higher. For NVIDIA you need 169 or higher. Once you have a workstation graphics card installed with the latest driver, Houdini should start up without any problem.

(this is a bug that we're working on, but in the meantime, there ya go)

What version does that apply to?

I can run 8.2.238 on my (by 2009 standards) low end machine, but 9.5.30 won't even start.

I kind of doubt? that it's the graphics drivers, because even running the text mode “hserver.exe” command gives the windows “send error report” dialog.

Mike