I have been working on a project for a while now using blender 2.5 alpha 2 and I recently downloaded version 2.53. While working I have switched back and forth between both versions of blender and now I have this strange glitch. When I try to render (in either version), blender crashes. However, if all of the objects in the scene are hidden in the 3D viewport then it renders fine. It is just this one project that has developed this problem. Has this happened to anyone else?
First, don’t jump back and forth between versions if this is production work. There is lots of churn (especially in the alpha / beta stages) that constantly changes how data is stored and represented. Just because it will open the file doesn’t mean it won’t bite you in the ass later.
First, if you have VBOs enabled, turn them off and see if that helps.
Next file a bug and upload the file as a reference file that causes the crash.