unfortunately the only explanation is autodesk. you simply have to live with fatal errors since Autodesk bought Alias, like they will for sure buy Microsoft, Shell and United Emirates too at some point in the future. well, maya had crashes too before Autodesk, but not in this high amount. ever worked with 3dsMax? this program is a perfect example for fatal errors. that´s not just my opinion but everybody´s who I ever met working with 3ds, including programmers which wrote scripts and plugins for both - maya and 3ds.

well enough of polemics. you can do the following to understand this kind of crashes. check the source code of maya. unless you are a programmer and work for the company... but hey! you will also be taken over by Autodesk if you are too good at your job, so don´t worry. or you could check all your hardware, install maya on different machines with different drivers for each part of hardware, then test all concerning operations were maya closed down.

as a matter of fact I can tell after about 20 different PC setups at places were I worked -

every version of maya after v7 has a problem with the UV editor. it just seems to be programmed badly. since I am not a programmer, the sentence before this one could also be wrong. there are 2 kinds of operations which likely make maya crash. those are "close hole" and all "boolean" stuff. not allways but chances are good. also if you have your UV editor open for too long with heavy meshes active -> fatal error (memory issue I guess).

how you can avoid fatal errors in those specific cases I told you in the first place. believe me pal I tried a lot and hat fatal errors over and over again.


and yes, the fatal error will come back again. at least don´t worry about that. just make sure you save work frequently because those temp.ma files stored in C:/document... can´t allways be opend or crash maya again right after loading.

good luck!