Blender 2.73 crashes on startup, Windows 7

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Hi All,

I’ve just done a fresh install of Windows 7 on my machine, & Blender is not running like it should.

At first, it just crashed on startup. I double clicked the Blender icon, Blender became white, and the error, “This program is not responding,” came up. I tried it like 5 times because I couldn’t believe my misfortune.

I googled around and found that if I install the latest version of python and overwrite Blender’s python folder with C:\Python34 - Blender then runs. I did that, and Blender did run, (yay) and so I thought I’d fixed all my problems. But Blender may as well not run at all because I have the following issues after I did the python thing:

  1. I can’t install addons, Blender just crashes when I try to check an addon to install.
  2. I can’t do live preview renders with Cycles, Blender crashes.
  3. I can’t change the Blender theme, I get a bunch of errors about some file not being valid.
  4. A lot of other things cause it to crash (I can’t remember exactly what off the top of my head, but general usage, nothing special.) I’ve made it crash lots of times in different ways.

Needless to say, Blender isn’t working as it should. Is it my mistake that I overwrote Blender’s python folder? If so, why wasn’t Blender starting up right in the first place?

My specs are:

Laptop: Lenovo Y50-70
Processor: Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX860M

Notes:

  • It’s a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro

  • I’ve installed latest Intel display drivers

  • I’ve installed latest NVIDIA driver (347.52)

  • I’ve tried blender 2.72 and I experience the same problems

  • I’ve tried blender 2.70 and I get less problems, but I can’t render with my GPU (which is the whole reason I bought this laptop in the first place)

  • I’ve tried other operating systems (Ubuntu 14.04, Fedora 21) and spent about 2 weeks trying to get NVIDIA drivers and CUDA working, which I failed at dismally.

  • I’ll be happy to use Blender 2.70 as it has all the features I need and it works the best for me, so far. I just NEED to use my GPU! At least Blender 2.73 will render a scene with my GPU in Cycles, it just crashes on the render preview mode making it unusable.

Thanks everyone for your help in advance!