It really should not matter if he is using 32 or 64 bit versions of the os and the software. With his system 64-bit would make more sense but maya should keep a valid version of the scene file at all times and worst case you should end up with some changes not updated. I use half a dozen 3D modeling packages and ONLY maya corrupts scene files!

I am constantly plagued with "error parsing data line 762" when I open scenes and the scene opens in wireframe with the grid settings and other preference settings scrambled.

For over a year I have been bitching about Maya's lack of stability when deleting history, and saving files, and preferences and scene files becoming corrupted. For almost as long I have listened to people use the "I have used maya for x years and it's working fine for me" defense. I got tired of it and have captured several stack dumps and spent over 3 hours with an engineer that has confirmed every single problem I have been reporting since maya 2010!

His answer was we know it's happening. We know it's happening on what we consider small subset of systems. We know it is a hardware or software conflict but it's not a priority and there are no solutions at this time!

So I just model more and more in modo. I would switch to max but I refuse to invest any time in learning any autodesk products!