This AMD 64-bit crash for ZBrush3.1 has been entered as a bug. Additional information you have would help in this area, such as programs being run, virtual memory usage.
I have AVG antivirus running.
Sometimes if I’ve run photoshop before launching zbrush I will get the same problem.
The longer I run zbrush seems to increase the chance that it will not re-launch.
I have 11GB free on my C: drive.
2 GB ram.
Seems I spoke too soon about having mine fixed by editing the Data Execution Prevention settings.
I’ve had a feeling this was an AMD problem, because at work I’ve beta tested 3.1 and Zapplink 3 on a Dell workstation with the exact same specs except for having a Xeon processor without any problems at all.
When my machine is first turned on, it loads up okay roughly 7 out of 10 times. If I try to save a tool with ctrl-s, I crash immediately. However, I can save without problems using the save button under the Tool menu set. Zapplink 3 crashes extremely often and I would consider it unusable at the moment. Smart resym crashes about half the time I use it.
My machine is:
AMD X2 3800+, EVGA Nvidia 4 motherboard, EVGA 7800 GT video card, 2 gigs Corsair DDR 400 ram,
My OS is Windows XP Pro Sp2, running the most current Nvidia Forceware and Graphics drivers as of today (not sure the exact number off the top of my head), Norton Antivirus 2007, ZoneAlarm Pro firewall, IPod system service, and Trillian IM manager.
I’ve tried turning off ZoneAlarm and Norton in case they were interfering in some way with licensing but that did not fix any of the problems with starting up. Closing down all but the most vital system processes did not seem to fix the issue either.
As I mentioned before, my work machine is a Xeon 3.2 dual core processor with the exact same versions of all of the above mentioned software, and even the exact same video card, etc. I’ve never had any of these problems on that machine.
Unfortunately I had to declare myself a traitor to ZB3 and move back over to Mudbox so I can actually get some work done at home. It feels like my house burnt down and I’m living in a hotel room waiting for it to be fixed.
Vine, are you running the AMD Dual Core Optimizer? If not try it, if so try to turn it off.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,30_182_871_9706,00.html
JohnnyBoy, 11GB free on your C: drive, where I assume ZBrush3 is installed, is probably not enough for the virtual memory paging ZBrush does. Especially if your drive is fragmented.
Also please try the AMD Dual Core Optimizer instructions I gave for vine.
AnneLise, would it be better to free up another 10GB on my C drive, or to reinstall zbrush on my other hard drive with over 400GB free?
I would install it on the other drive. You can’t have too much space when dealing with multi-million poly files. 
Ok, I freed up about 30GB, defragmented and ran the dual core optimizer. So far, so good.
This may be good enough until I get a new pc over the winter. I did notice that it now quickly skips past the intro screen where you choose what you want to do.
Anyway, thanks for the advice.
sorry for my bad english…
well i had the same problem, and i find a solution for the moment… uninstall zbrush, remove all the plugins / scripts / etc. , install it and use it as default…
mmm i had power of 2 and zapplink 3 only installed… maybe zapplink is the problem… zbrush works fine for me now…
Hi,
The same thing is happening to me. Here are the specs for my machine:
Single Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
4 Gbs Ram
It was running on this machine and this never happened:
Dual Single AMD Opteron 246 (DP) 2 GHz
Tyan S2891
4 Gbs Ram
Could this possibly be a hardware issue with the AMD processors? Just a hunch.
Thanks
Try disabling DEP for ZBrush. (Data Execution Protection) Doing a Google search will turn up the instructions you need for how to do this.
badgirl, what specifically is your problem. There is a known save crash problem, but may be fixable using one or both of: adding ZBrush3 to data execution prevention and/or use of the AMD core optimizer.
I forgot to say I’m running Windows XP x64 SP1. But, I switched DEB from “Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only” to “Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select” and excluded Zbrush. I was able to open it and close it multiple times without it crashing. Hopefully, this will continue to work. Thanks!
hi, i am also running 3.1 on XP, on AMD 64 X2 3800+. Zbrush is crashing around once every ten mins with a particular option, whicih is when i am jumping around on the subtools, from one to another smoothing or anything else to that matter. It has done it plenty whilst changing material variables and then re-rendering and re-rendering. The system seems to become overwhelmed with what its processing in repetition. (use to have a simular problem on the mac with Z2)
This is a new system, windows XP, complete clean install. Only Zbrush 3.1 has been installed. 2gigs of ram, with Zbrush mem settings as suggested above. The HD has plenty of space, around 75gigs.
I have tried the download from the AMD site as recomended above and it kept crashing even sooner so i unintalled that. I do keep an eye on the mem counter at the top and that has always got over a gig when it crashes.
It doesnt normally crash in sculpting operations themselves, so no poly adjusting seems to set it off. Narrowed down to function swapping such as material changes and then re-rendering over and over and tool swapping in subtools.
I noticed one issue, you could call it a incompability issue that causes Zbrush 3.1 to bail out and instantly crash upon startup. This happens if you have installed Sysinternals Process Explorer and if it’s open. Then Zbrush 3.1 refuses to start no matter what you try… but closing Process Explorer will let Zbrush start again. This happens on my XP64 system with 8gb ram. I don’t know yet if this also happens on XP32 but most likely it will happen.
/ Max
Zbrush 3.1 used to crash on me since i upgraded my pc ( don’t ask me why ) but disabling DEP solved the problem or at least since this morning i haven’t had any crash with the same ZTL file that used to frustrate me ( crashing after 10 to 20 seconds of loading ) so thank you for pointing that out … the DEP disabling saved me really, thanks AnneLise and aurick 
good luck with the others
my system spec in case it might help :-
Intel Pentium D 3.40 GHz 2x2 4mb cache
ASRock 4Core1333-eSATA2 motherboard
4 GBytes DDR2 667 bus
Nividia GeForce 8500GT DDR2 1024 MB
320 GB SATA2 hard disk
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 SP2
alright … sorry to say this… crashing is back and i am getting spikes kind of effect when i switch between different subdevisions, when i am not crashing, the model is only 19844 polys at its max subd 4 while Zbrush compact mem is 2 GB, and MaxPolyPerMesh is set to 20 … i have 35 GB free disk space on C: where zbrush installed… any help ? suggestions ? … aurick !!!
I have very similar specs and I solved the problem with a solution I used for
a different program but with similar problems.
For me it was an affinity problem, dual core processors have an affinity with 2 cores,
to solve the problem you must set the affinity to one core.
You go to Processes, the ZBrush process will just be ‘healthy’ for a short amount of time (due to the early crash), so it’s best to use inversed alphabetical order (so the Z processes show up first).
@Max the Artist
Had the exact same startup issue described in this thread (on Intel Duo CPU and non-NVIDIA hardware) and your solution solved my problem. Closing process explorer and all is well again. Thanks for posting this!!
nozem’s solution worked for me! Thank you!