If you downloaded a local version of the help files, avoid using the
SI_HELP_PROGRAM_ENV environment variable. If you set that environment variable, the browser doesn’t find the help files.

If necessary, unset SI_HELP_PROGRAM_ENV and set your default browser to Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer.

Then, in the General preferences, set Help Location to Local Computer/ Network.

If that doesn’t work, then set Help Location to Custom and use the file:// protocol:

file:///C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Help\softimage2012\en_us

When you’ve done all the usual startup troubleshooting (running runonce.bat, resetting your preferences, and testing the display driver), but you still crash, it’s a good idea to test whether xsibatch can run. Sometimes this will give us a different error message, or another clue as to what’s going wrong.

1. Open a Softimage command prompt
2. In the command prompt, run these commands:

echo LogMessage "Hello" > %TEMP%\test.vbs
xsibatch -processing -script %TEMP%\test.vbs

3. You should see something like this:

   =======================================================
    Autodesk Softimage 10.0.422.0
   =======================================================
   
   License information: using [Processing]
   COMMAND: -processing -script C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Temp\test.vbs
   ' INFO : Hello
   

If you’re still having problems with disconnected shaders, even with HotFix2, you could try using dotXSI to remove any corrupt materials from your material library.

Here’s the basic procedure. You may want to create a temporary copy of your material library, and then use the explorer to copy all the materials into the temporary material library.

1. Load the original asset (scene or model).
2. In the explorer, switch to Materials scope, and click the icon for the material library.
3. In the library PPG, change the storage to External (dotxsi text) and click Export Library.
4. Save the scene.
5. Close and restart Softimage.
6. Open the scene.
7. In the explorer, right-click the material library and click Locks > Unlock All Levels.
8. In the material library PPG, change the storage back to Internal.
9. Save or export the asset.

HotFix2 cannot fix render trees that are already broken. You’ll have to repair those materials after you remove the corruption.

Here’s how to recover a scene and remove the material corruption with HotFix2.

It is critical to restart Softimage during this procedure.

1. Load the corrupted scene into Softimage 2011 (with HotFix2).
2. Save the scene.
3. Restart Softimage.
4. Load the scene again.
5. Now you can start repairing your materials.

The connections of corrupted materials are broken upon initial load, but corrupted shaders themselves still remain. After saving, restarting XSI.exe, and reloading the scene, corrupted shaders that are not salvageable have been removed and whatever shaders remain can be used to reconstruct materials.

In this case, the customer reported that 64-bit Softimage abruptly shut down just after the splash screen appeared, with no errors and no sign of the actual UI. 32-bit Softimage, however, worked just fine.

This didn’t sound like the usual runonce/rename user folder/reinstall graphic driver case, so I asked him to try to run a script with xsibatch, to see if 1) xsibatch also crashes and 2) whether there is a problem with VBScript (because Softimage cannot run without VBScript).

echo LogMessage "Hello" > %TEMP%\test.vbs
xsibatch -processing -script %TEMP%\test.vbs

It turned out that there were problems with both JScript and VBScript on his system:

=======================================================
Autodesk Softimage 9.5.184.0
=======================================================

' ERROR : 2000 - Failed creating scripting engine: VBScript.
' ERROR : 2000 - Failed creating scripting engine: JScript.

To show that this was system problem, not just a Softimage problem, we tried using wscript to run a VBscript:

echo wscript.echo "Hello" > hello.vbs
wscript hello.vbs

We tried re-registering the VBScript and JScript DLLs with regsvr32, with no luck.

After some googling and experimentation on my own system, I narrowed it down to the specific registry keys:

• HKCR\CLSID\B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8 (VBscript)
• HKCR\CLSID\F414C260-6AC0-11CF-B6D1-00AA00BBBB58 (JScript)

So I exported those keys from my registry and sent them to the customer.
And after he imported them, Softimage worked!

I would have preferred to get it working without doing that (manually importing reg values), but it beats reinstalling windows. I guess.

Note that on Windows 7, you may need to change the ownership and permissions on the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ before you can edit any keys.

I sometimes wondered why Rock Falcon always had a noIcon texture in my viewport, even though if I did a render region, I could see the texture was really there.
I assumed it was something about the software on my system, because Manny didn’t have the same problem even though he has the exact same hardware.

Then I read this post from Luc-Eric on the mailing list:

I discovered a bug in the standard jpeg library that causes a problem
with some formats of jpeg — probably progressive.
It uses a temp file to decompress them and in Windows that ends up
being a temp file in the root of the drive. If you’re under Vista or
some account with limited privileges that prevent writing to the root
of the drive, the jpegs won’t load.
via JPG Baseline / Progressive – Google Groups.

I did a quick check with Process Monitor, and I saw that Softimage was indeed trying to create a file in my C:\ driver, and getting ACCESS DENIED.
I checked Manny’s machine, and he can write to the C:\ drive because he has UAC disabled.

If you get this error when you try to run runonce.bat:

sireg.exe – System Error
The program can’t start because Crosswalk_2-11.5.64.dll is missing
from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

it’s probably because your PATH environment variable is missing the Softimage Common Files:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Softimage;
• C:\Program Files\Common Files\Softimage;