I've got a corrupted .hip files that crashes Houdini. How could I open the file without cooking it, so I can remove the problematic nodes?

Hi, if you open Houdini (without loading the file), you should be able to select Manual Update instead of Auto Update (bottom right). Then open the file and it should stay on Manual Update so it won't cook anything.

Another method that sometimes works is to change the viewport to something else (like Geometry Spreadsheet) and then load the file. Some crashes will only happen when it tries to display a problematic node in the viewport.

Rob

Just to put my two cents in, if you're loading a hipfile from command line, you can use the -noption, which enforces "Manual" update mode.