My cows are dying.

Seriously, I'm having MAJOR issues trying to use Vue 8 Studio's hypervue with my Windows 7 x64 machines.  I have opened a tech support incident at e-on, but they insulted me by telling me to do something that I CLEARLY stated I tried already -- they didn't even read my whole report.  And I'm aging as I wait for further help.  (And I can't even BUY phone support, because they only offer it on Vue infinite and above!!)  I'm praying someone here can perhaps provide some assistance, though I actually think this is a bug and they need to fix it.

I have 3 PCs at home.  (Specs for all 3 listed at the bottom of this post.)  Two of them are i7 machines running Windows 7 x64 (1 desktop, 1 laptop).  The third is an older dual-core laptop running Windows 7 x32.  I am a Vue Studio user, though I slowly upgraded from Frontier to Esprit to Studio by purchasing modules.  Bottom line is this:  When I set up hypervue, I have no problems finding render cows on all 3 machines.  The cows update automatically if needed, to match the version of Vue currently running.  The environment, scene, and textures are all sent to the cows.  However, especially on renders with GI atmospheres, during the prepass render on the x64 machines, the render cows crash. 

The cow on the 32-bit dual core NEVER crashes.

I have tried running as an administrator -- both Vue and cows -- and in every compatibility mode listed.  I have tried rendering to only 1 64-bit cow, to both 64-bit cows, or to all 3 cows. I have tried turning off windows firewall, turning off my antivirus, opening holes in the firewall for cow and hypervue ports.  I have checked to be sure the version numbers are the same in hypervue and the cows.  I have tried running vue on the 64-bit desktop and rendering to the farm from there.  I have tried running vue on the 64-bit laptop and rendering to the farm from there.  I have made sure the port numbers were correct in all places.  I have auto-discovered cows.  I have added cows manually.  I have tried the most recent stable release.  I have tried the beta release.

I have tried everything short of animal sacrifice.  And I'm MORE than ready to start butchering render cows at this point.  Just give me a shotgun, and I'm there.

The result is ALWAYS the same.  Render cows will crash on the 64-bit machines before the render finishes.  ONLY the 32-bit slowpoke renders without crashing.  And what the heck is the point of a network render when it's FASTER to use the single-machine render engine instead??

HELP??  SOMEONE??  PLEASE?!!

Per my license, I have Vue installed on both the laptop and the desktop, though I only ever run it on one machine at a time.

DESKTOP (Vue Studio and Cow installed) -
Intel CORE i7 920 (2.67 GHz)
12 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX260
Win7 x64

LAPTOP A (Vue Studio and Cow installed) -
Intel CORE i7 720 (1.60 GHz)
4 GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650
Win7 x64

LAPTOP B (Cow only installed)
Intel CORE2 Duo T6500 2.10 GHz
3.0 GB RAM
Integrated graphics
Windows 7 x32

ANY advice would be GREATLY appreciated.  

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3650623&ebot_calc_page#message_3650623

OMG...  I THINK THIS MAY HAVE FIXED IT!!  

YAY!!! :)

Looks like the disable 128 bit encryption in Win 7 needs to be stickied....... 

I still have one file which simply refuses to network render, but I'm going to assume it became corrupt somewhere along the way, and hope I don't find others like it.

E-on said they could not reproduce the problem.  I finally got a scene with GI to render (all the way through!) via hypervue yesterday, after changing the encryption. 

Strangely, this only seemed to be an issue with the 64-bit windows 7, not the 32-bit.

Thanks again,

 It might be prudent for me to add a couple things to this as well. With windows 7 , often times the defragmenter will be turned on (in a schedule). If defrag runs while you are trying to render, it can interrupt the render and cause the cow to crash as well. I defrag manually. Simply turn off the scheduler. There may be other apps set within the scheduler as well, I looked at mine just a bit ago and there were a few updates scheduled on a daily basis for a few other apps I have. I deleted the schedules for those apps. :)