These two really don't like to mix it seems I mean, Houdini would crash with windows before, but atleast you could retrieve a backup file from your $TEMP and it would warn you about it all. Now with DOPs, it's happening all over the place.. And when it happens it's just gone. No errors, no warnings.. Just poof and you're done for.

For example, open up help and load in the visualizeimpacts example from the sop solver. Now go and try to uncheck the ‘add impact’ parm in the rbd solver. Boom gone. Better yet, go load in that example and just try to delete the obj network that is created. Boom gone. Now this may be due to my build number being outdated (412), but i don't get this at all on Suse.. And it seems to happen on a number of different occasions (which may all be non existant anymore due to bug fixes in recent builds).. Now, I like linux as much as the next guy, but sometimes i may just be at a windows box and too lazy to reboot to try something out real quick. That or I may be needing windows only software at the same time.

So yea, is this a windows thing? a memory thing? a bug thing? is it still happening on recent builds? For windows users out there, have you noticed a difference in stability as well since H8 and has it been getting better with the more recent builds?

Win XP sp2
Athlon XP 1900
1 gig crucial ram
gf4 ti4200
H8.0.412

There is a bug in DOPs that was introduces in 411 and got fixed in 415. So I'd update your version of Houdini. I tried the procedure you describe and didn't have any problems. Post again if updating versions doesn't fix your problem.

As for Windows stability, I can only speak from my personal experience which is that all significant differences between Windows and Linux stability result from the quality of the specific video drivers you are using. If you have a bad driver under linux, linux will be less stable. If you have a bad driver under Windows, Windows will be less stable. So if you are having lots of problems with crashing under Windows where doing the same things under Linux will not crash, I would suggest looking for at your video driver. The latest driver version is rarely the best one for use with Houdini.

But then I don't work in a real production environment so my observations may not be typical…

Mark

Thanks for the reply Mark.. I'm pretty sure the drivers on both sides are solid and they're definitely not the latest bleeding edge ones.. I'd bet it's completely due to that bug you mention as the windows build is 412 and the Suse one is 422.. So I'll def grab the latest one for windows and try it out. If i see any more problems, I'll be sure to let you know..

Thanks..