Perhaps the shortest blog post in the world, and only applicable to a very small cross-section of the geek population. However, if this little nugget of knowledge saves one other person the hours it took me to find this out, my work is done.
If you’re trying to run SoftImage XSI Mod Tool (version 7.5 here) on a laptop or computer with a finger print scanner, you may have noticed that, 98% of the time you’re presented with the following error “Autodesk Softimage has stopped working”. You’ve probably already tried these; http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_Startup_Problems – I even uninstalled QuickTime and iTunes.
Turns out that there is some crazy conflict between the Digital Persona Fingerprint scanner drivers that stops XSI Mod Tool from loading. I don’t know if this is specific to Vista 64 or it’s an across the board problem. Anyhow – the fix… Bring up your Windows Task Manager and kill “DpAgent.exe” and “DpAgent.exe *32″. That’s it. You won’t have a working fingerprint scanner until you restart, but you can model away to your hearts content. Enjoy.
Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!!
Been dabbling with C#/XNA for a while and been trying to use XSI Mod Tool just to play around with making some placeholder art for my project but couldn’t figure out any way to fix the crashing on splash screen problem. So here’s to a much deserved comment on your blog. You sir have helped that one other person and it is very much appreciated!
Comment by Trung Luu — December 17, 2009 @ 2:35 pm
Hi Trung,
Great to hear that this post helped someone! It’s one of those really annoying and completely random bugs that has no logic behind it at all, but I’m glad that you’re now able to mod-tool away to your heart’s content!
Have fun.
Comment by John Wordsworth — December 17, 2009 @ 3:34 pm