What they said. :beer:

I assume that's the .ma file you've attached? When I open it, I see two pieces of geometry and a curve. I can see the geometry fine... although, I'm not sure what it is. ?

You could try...

Try here too:

Rendering Fluids in Maya (http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2009help/index.html?url=Rendering_fluids_Rendering_fluids.htm,topicNumber=d0e436451)

I'm not a fluids guy but if they're anything like particles I think you need to use Hardware Render to render them?

:beer:

^^Good job daverave. ;)

mtcgs: A simple, yet effective way to solve most issues/bugs in Maya is to delete the prefs folder in the main directory. It looks like Maya isn't seeing any UI elements so...

Go to Display > Heads Up Display > Polycount. How many Tris/Faces do you have? Anything over a few hundred-thousand is going to begin to slow you down.

Do you have the latest video drivers installed?

How do you mean they won't show up in the "render view"? The render view is used for viewing renders while inside of Maya. If you want to view your...

Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but those missing shaders, deleted them maybe?

http://notboxed.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Happy-Meme-Face.jpg

I never have issues using targa (TGA). Try that.

I've found numerous errors when lighting that seem to disappear after deleting and creating a new light. Sometimes things go wrong that we can't explain and the simplest solution seems to be to just...