Issues at startup

Preference corruption

Symptom: Problems starting Maya after installation and proper licensing: splash screen appears or Maya fails to launch with a system error.

Your preferences may have become corrupted.

You can force Maya to recreate default preferences by renaming your existing preferences directory to prefs.backup. (It may be useful to save your old preferences in order to transfer information to newly-created preferences, or for use by Autodesk Support.)

The default prefs directory path is:

Windows

(Windows XP)

\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\maya\ 2009\en_US\prefs

(Windows XP 64-bit)

\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\maya\ 2009-x64\en_US\prefs

(Windows Vista)

\Users\<username>\Documents\maya\2009\en_US\prefs

(Windows Vista 64-bit)

\Users\<username>\Documents\maya\2009-x64\en_US\prefs

Mac OS X

/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/en_US/2009/prefs

Linux

(64-bit)
```
~<username>/maya/2009-x64/en_US/prefs
```

The Product Configuration Wizard does not appear

If you are attempting to enter your serial number or activation number and the Product Configuration Wizard does not appear when you start Maya (and Maya does not start), open the Product Configuration Wizard manually by doing one of the following:

(Windows) Go to Start > Programs > Autodesk > Autodesk Maya 2009 > Licensing.
(Mac OS X) In the Maya directory (by default, this is /Applications/Autodesk/Maya2009/), double-click the Autodesk Product Configuration Wizard icon.
(Linux) Enter the following command in a shell:
```
/usr/autodesk/maya2009/bin/opa
```

If the Product Configuration Wizard still doesn’t open you may have a damaged or incomplete install. Try reinstalling Maya.

The main Maya scene view doesn’t open, but the Script Editor does

This is usually due to graphic card problems on the machine. Check that you are using a qualified graphics card and that the qualified graphic card drivers are installed. The latest information on qualifying systems is always available at:

www.autodesk.com/qual-charts

Confirming hardware lock driver activation

Hardware lock drivers enable communication between a computer and its hardware lock.

(Windows) Driver activation (parallel or USB hardware lock)

The installer upgrades the drivers for your hardware lock unless the current version already exists on your computer.

There are several steps to make sure that the driver is installed and active:

After install: reboot to activate drivers. This should fix most problems.

Symptom: In some circumstances—such as plugging the hardware lock in before an install on a machine that is not connected to the Internet—a generic USB driver may be installed for the hardware lock.
Symptom: If you are running Windows XP Service Pack 2, and after installation, your 9-series hardware lock is not recognized.

In these cases, we recommend the following:

Download Win32 device drivers from the following URL:
www.aladdin.com/support/hasp/enduser.aspx
Uncompress and install the downloaded file.

Once this is installed, the Device Manager should recognize the USB dongle as an Aladdin USB Key. You may need to restart your machine.

(Linux) Driver activation (USB hardware lock)

Make sure you install the device driver that are specific to your distribution of Linux (Red Hat and SUSE). The names of the RPM packages are (Red Hat) aksusbd-redhat-1.8.1-3.i386.rpm and (SUSE) aksusbd-suse-1.8.1-3.i386.rpm. For more information, see Installing Maya (Linux) for Linux.