oh no, steam and source issues!
nightmares for all!

heheh,

i never used the plug-in for maya, i just learnt xsi
but i assume plug-ins for maya work like the ones for xsi
just find the plug-ins folder and paste the smd exporter there

i remember seeing something about this on the source wiki somewhere... being a wiki i probably won't be able to find it again because i don't know what i searched for when i found it

but, if things are still as they were 6 months ago there are two wikis, one kinda professionally kept, the other kept by typical teen nerds with their oh-i'm-so-cool-i-can-act-like-my-school-bullies-and-speak-in-geek attitude

if you have trouble finding what i'm thinking of i'll see if i can find it again

i remember seeing how the models would be imported with the z and y axis switched... because max and xsi have to have their coordinates the wrong way

as for your unspecified failure error.. that's a bizzare error... you were using crosswalk to talk between the two apps?