Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit
houdini-11.0.729-win64
service pack 2
.NET Framework 3.5
Intel core i7 3.2 GhZ
12.0 Gb ram


Well, tried to instal Houdini apprentice many many times and it fails every time on gfont.exe! Also hkey.exe. The command line tools fail when trying to run gfont -Sv as well. There's no verbose processing business going on at all, windows just pops up to tell me that hmaster.exe has stopped working and Microsoft will fix all my worries..Thank you Microsoft!

Also, I have been talking with tech support because its the hd version that i bought and I get responses that are so dissonant I can hardly believe the person has actually read my email! I listed my OS and machine specs and they actually returned my inquiry by saying that they don't support some version Ubuntu Linux! Hmm.. that's too bad however I am not on Linux, I am using Vista Ultimate 64 bit service pack 2!

I have disabled my anti virus software while downloading and installing, updated .NET Frame work3.5..
I am trying to uninstall messenger now to see if that helps as i have read there are some dll conflicts.

Probably no magic bullets here as i have tried so many things…. But, if anyone has ever had this issue and solved it having tried something different than i listed please let me know!
Thanks,
-A hopeful Houdini user.
ps. windows messenger uninstall didn't do sh%*.

Oh, I forgot to mention I have Quadro FX 3800 graphics card with the latest drivers installed as well.
-James

That's too bad. Did you try to run the installer “as Administrator”? Both gfonts, and hkey make changes in Windows/* subdirectories, thus need permissions. I actually don't recall this on my setup (albeit I install Houdini on Windows once a year at most), but I remember that refreshing Houdini's license every month requires “run as admin” mode on W7.

If you have Windows Live Essentials beta installed, try uninstalling it. A quick search of the forums indicated that worked for a few users.

Thanks guys,
I am administrator on this machine by default (tuned off that protection feature).
I had windows live installed but not the beta version (I uninstalled the regular version just in case). No changes after trying fresh install.

since hkey.exe is not working for you either, it points towards some security or permissions issue.

You've probably already looked at this thread:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=20462 [sidefx.com]

but try also turning off firewall or antivirus, if you have them.

Also take a look at this page, in case there are some incompatibility issues:
http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/IncompatibleSoftware [odforce.net]

Thanks rafal!
I haven't narrowed down the problem yet (too busy at work) but your link here http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/IncompatibleSoftware [odforce.net] seems promising.

I do have bit torrent and I do have a wacom tablet so those are two areas for me to look into further. I am thankful for the community of responsive and smart people here. Can't say I have had any good trouble shooting advise from side effects support unfortunately..
Thanks,
James