I'm more than a little irritated with Carrara's programmers, and I wanted to post a warning to everyone considering buying or upgrading -- in hopes that this will prompt them to fix the problem.  

Carrara 8 pro 64 bit does not work -- at all -- on my system.  It crashes instantly on launch.  
I have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times.
I have all the latest drivers and have tried every troubleshooting method under the sun.  

Other high end graphics software works fine on my system (Zbrush, Poser 2010, Blender,  Hexagon 2.5, GIMP) so it's not a failure of my hardware.   And after consulting repeatedly with their techs, their only response basically was to shrug and say "sorry".   They just can't or won't find and fix the bug.    Apparently I'm in the minority, and since it works for most other users, it just sucks for me.     If you have a system with similar hardware components, be forewarned not to expect results:

My System:  Asus mother board.  Windows 7 64 bit Home --  Intel(R) 3.0 Ghz Core(TM)2 Quad CPU -- 8 GB  RAM --  My Graphics Card is an NVIDIA Geoforce GTS 250.
Nothing in my system is particularly exotic or unusual -- 99% of the software I run on it works flawlessly.  There's no good reason why Carrara should be any different.

Don't misunderstand -- I like Carrara and want to use it.

I'm just very frustrated that they have written code that is apparently just not compatible with certain hardware or operating systems (or some combination thereof).  One sign that really tells me they haven't coded everything cleanly is that their uninstaller clearly doesn't really thoroughly uninstall old versions of the program -- not that this is the whole problem, but it is a bad sign that they haven't carefully engineered a clean product.

Carrara coders, please, please, please fix your product up and test it better on multiple hardware configurations before selling it.   And fix it now for those of us out in the cold.

Window users are not alone in this. I am a Mac user and have major issues with C8 Pro - while not as bad as your issue, C8 is, IMO, not ready for prime time - yet. Way too many crashes!  D|S 3 Advamced is a much more stable product (at least for me) - I have reported these issues to the DAZ Bug Tracker.

C6 and even C7 work great for me and that's the shame of it all.

I have since decided to persue Cinema 4D instead, since it aleady works in 64 bit and is extremely stable on my system (Mac, and it's available for PC as well) - (you get what you pay for I guess) For Poser/DAZ users, it has the fantastic "Interposer Pro" plug-in to load your content, if this is a concern.

So, you're not alone servo

For the mac version people at daz know about all problems and are running to fix, just keep your eyes in the bug track. Servo, if they cant reproduce the problem is hard to fix. me major problem with Windows are the UAC that crash a lot Carrara and other softwares... try to find a possible reason, so tehy can investigate. I had a problem with the Plant Editor, but they couldnt reproduce, after send a video showing what I was doing they found the bug and fixed. Without any information, just saying that it crash at startup dont say nothing.
There a lot of system routines in Win7 that can be turned off. Post more about the problem, maybe some software are blocking Carrara.

I already posted a lot about the problem in a previous thread on this forum.

There simply isn't much more detail I can give about the problem for one simple reason:

I launch it, and it crashes instantly, in less than one second - not even completing showing the start up splash screen.    That means there's not a lot to work with in terms of making adjustments.   While I sympathize with needing reproducability to fix errors, this constitutes a pretty major flaw for which they offered no helpful suggestions.  

My version of Windows 7 is vanilla-generic, right out of the box.  I have not made customizations to the operating system in any way that should need any adjusting.
My personal suspicion is that the issue is one of compatibility with my video card, but they offered no insight on that either, and I'm afraid that would be a coding issue, not a settings issue.
Previous versions of Carrara worked fine on the same machine, and even the 32 bit version works fine on this machine.  I'm not running anything concurrently with Carrara that should have even a remote chance of interfering with its operation.

Did you got the beta versions that they posted in the forums? Maybe this can help too. I dont have any problem here, but need to turn off UAC (I hate this thing since Vista). I will try to find some software to see if theres one that can report why the crash happen... I remeber to see something like that right in Win7...but dont remember what was...

I tried the beta, no luck there either.

Please explain more about UAC, I'm not familiar with it by the acronym you used.

User Account Control (UAC) is supposed to be extra security, which was introduced with Vista and it supposed to fight programs being run without your knowledge that might harm your computer.

There is no middle settings, either the UAC is ON or OFF.  I turn mine OFF, but its a good feature for Novice Computer users.

You can find instructions on how to turn it off Here:

I recommend Method #4
http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

Thanks for the info, but this isn't the issue either.

Did you have the UAC on during Carrara installation? If yes, pleas einstall it again. Carrara install new routines for the C++ environment in the end of the software installation, if this dont install Carrara will crash in the start.

don't feel bad the carrara 8 I have will not and I mean will not install to 64 bit on my mac pro the techs have given me all the installers and none of them will do 64 bit If someone out there has any ideas or an installer that might work I'm all ears the only thing that does work from them is Bryce 6 and that is only in 32 bit ( at least it is on my mac

That's weird.  I'm running close to the exact same system, and Carrara 8 pro 64 does fine for me. I have Windows 7 64, 8 gig, quad core, GeForce GTS 250 NIVIDIA card.  (!?  The video card is the same?!)  Processor is an AMD Phenonom II X4 95 3.21 Ghz.

Wonder what's going on?  Hey, what kind of virus software do you have?  I use Kaspersky.  Did you give Carrara administrator privledges?  I know you've probably done this, but have you tried running it with the antivirus turned off?  Some programs do not play well with others.

Does tend to crash a good bit, which is annoying.  I just save often.   

well, I'm not running windows yet am trying to use snow leopard for now I do have 8 gig the  geforce card is a 120 there's two as for processor(s) 2x2.26 ghz quad core intel xeon

 now that the "learning carrara 8" has shown up I see why you like the program,except for the crashes.
 anyway will have to download some daz figures,props etc.
 hope windows 7 shows up next week.
 I have a question about native content I loaded it but it doesn't show up in applications like it kept doing when I was having troubles with it not going into the 64 bit, but was saying 32 bit even after using the 64 bit installer.
 One final stupid question about downloading what is the "correct destination" I keep hearing about? is it the default "/users/ my name/documents/Daz 3d/studio 3/ or is it something totally different?

The native content installer for the Mac does not put the proper installation path by default.  You need to change the destination to whatever folder you installed the Carrara application in.....on my system it is /Applications/DAZ 3D/Carrara 8.  If you don't install the native content to the same location as the app, it will not load in the browser, and the landscape wizard will not work.

 the application is  /applications/daz3d/carrara8 64 bit but when you get the native it's /applications/daz3d/carrara 8 it doesn't have the 64 bit and if you put the 64 bit on the end it still comes up  32 bit. I installed it but can't find the native in the applications where it should be.
 everything seems to work except I can't get the paint to download

Servo, perhaps you've already tried that, too, but have you reinstalled your OS, installed Carrara on it's own, fresh formatted partition before you installed anything else?
It may be a lot of work, but I had exactly the same problem some years ago with Poser 6 and this solved my problem (yes, I know, Carrara isn't Poser, but it's just an idea).
Hope this issue is eventually solved for your.

~Sassy~

 I dont recall where , but somewhere somehow sometime ago on the mac versions there was a conflict with the fonts. Had to hack some file to make Carrara find the right font then it would load up just fine. Any one remember this issue? Just wondering if it might be the culprit on the pc now.

By the way, please explain more about UAC? or any links.