Unable to determine Maya environment

[brunobowden]

Dear All,

I can't get Maya to load at all. I apply a lot of changes to the Maya.env file and internal scripts, which has probably broken something. I get this error on start up:

"Unable to determine the Maya environment. Please specify the directory above the one containing the Maya executable."

It then allows you to specify the folder. Setting it as the bin, Maya4.5 (under program files) or directory contain the Maya.env, simply generates this message:

"Warning: Cannot run Maya without a valid setting for MAYA_LOCATION. Exit Program?"

Setting the Maya.env file to be blank (removing all my modifications), still leaves the problem. But starting up Maya4.0 will work. I'm using Win 2000 and have never had this problem before.

Thanks.

Bruno

[gmask]

check the environment variables under your computers properties. There should be a path variable pointign to your bin directory

[brunobowden]

I checked on this and my machine only has a system environment variable for MAYA_SHADER_LIBRARY_PATH. Nothing for MAYA_LOCATION, and not on other people's machines either. I tried adding the variable and specifying the correct value but no luck with that. Good idea though.

[gmask]

Did you see the path variable?

[brunobowden]

No path variable for the executable, only for the shader library. I hate doing this but I uninstalled and reinstalled the software and it now works fine. Still no env variable recorded by Win2k, so it must be stored elsewhere. I'm about to leave the office, so I'm running a MAYA_LOCATION full text search on my system... hopefully it might reveal a little more.

Bruno

P.S. I much appreciate the fast responses.

[joojaa]

Check your nmaya env is it pointing to the correct place if it ist then make it point correctly either in the env fle or global environment!

[brunobowden]

I tried a few variations on the maya.env file, including deleting all the contents (which is the working default for other users). I then reinstalled the software and it now works fine. When I also replaced the maya.env file with what I had before it still works. So my guess is that something had been corrupted or deleted.

The full text search for MAYA_LOCATION yielded quite a few items. Mostly docs, but also libs, dlls and a few location sensitive mel scripts. There was some other stuff but nothing that seemed to be setting an environment variable.

So what is setting the variable? Well, starting maya from a different location doesn't change it, so it's not on that basis. My guess would be that it's assuming a default location, like C:Program FilesA..W..Maya4.X. Only setting that as the MAYA_LOCATION directory when the problem arose did nothing to solve it. Anyway, at least it's working now.

[gmask]

You have to have a path system variable in your computer properties it is used by the system as well as many other programs .. and even though I'm not entirely sure ..I'm thinking if the maya bin directory is not listed there then you would have this problem.. so please go and look there again...you have to have this variable it's inbetween Os2libpath and PATHTEXT

[brunobowden]

What happens when you add a MAYA_LOCATION setting in the maya.env:

If the location is correct then it works, if it's wrong it will be ignored and the default location used. As a test, I used the Maya4.0 directory, which did work except for some scripts/plugins failing to load. So Maya knows what it should be and doesn't need the value to be set (it may be different for IRIX). All very strange.

Bruno

[brunobowden]

I found the path variable, which included the maya4.0 and maya4.5 directories. Upon deleting these paths, the OS could no longer find maya from a command line, but the shortcut worked and maya returned the correct MAYA_LOCATION from inside the program. So maya must be getting the MAYA_LOCATION variable from somewhere else.

When I finish up at the end of the day, I'll do a full text search for maya4.5 path, to try and see where it's stored.

Bruno

[joojaa]

yes if its not in the path you cant run it from command line like any command... but maya otherwise. uses the maya env settings!