i had the same problem, and posted it here managed to solve it after long hours of frustrating black buckets in mental ray (same error)
try the following things:
1) check the mental ray map manager, conserve memory, placeholder objects in Processing. Also, try setting a higher Memory limit
2) in the Rendering tab of Preferences, check the Bitmap Pager on, and try increasing Page Size, Bitmap Size, etc in small increments (multiples)
3) Collapse ALL your stacks - this made a HUGE difference for me as my scene contained literally hundreds of stacks.
4) last option - (suggested by Tyson) - generate a Final Gather map for a lesser resolution (which will not crash), and re-use it to render at a higher resolution
hope it helps

P.S. also render to a file, on a hard drive with lots of space

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

I knew I had seen that here somewhere, I guess I over looked it.

I'll give it a shot tomorrow, I'm too exhausted mess with it right now.

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Chris

Can you elaborate on placeholder objects and bitmap pager and or point me to the thread you started?
I'm crashing even when I try to render without FG and GI.

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Chris

had a similar problem, it's a random bug in mental ray as i believe. The solution i found working is simply exporting everything in your scene, reset max and import everything in a new scene and save it (don't overwrite, make a new save)

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein

the thread - [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com]
not much use though....
here's the info from the help:

Use Placeholder Objects
When on, 3ds Max sends geometry to the mental ray renderer only on demand. Initially, the mental ray scene database is populated only with the size (bounding box) and position of objects in the 3ds Max scene. When the mental ray renderer renders a bucket that contains an object, the object's geometry is sent to the rendering engine only at that point. Default=off.
This option can improve rendering speed when a large amount of the scene's geometry is outside of the view you are rendering.

The Bitmap Pager can help with the rendering of scenes that have very large textures, a large number of textures, or when rendering a high-resolution image.

On
When on, the software creates a series of temporary “page” files on the drive where it is installed for use in rendering bitmaps.

Page Size (k
Sets the size of the bitmap page. If textures are smaller than the page size, the system allocates only the memory required.

Bitmap Size Threshold (k
Sets the minimum size (in kilobytes) that a bitmap must be in order to be paged.

Memory Pool (k
Controls the amount of memory used by the pager. All pages remain in memory until this limit is reached. When the limit is reached, the pager begins saving pages to disk. Pages that are not frequently used are paged out; more frequently used pages are kept in memory.

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

also just try the "Collapse" utility.... try rendering....if it fucks up your scene, then just don't save the collapsed version

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

I've tried everything that has been suggested here and it keeps crashing. I haven't reinstalled Max yet though. At this point I don't really have the will to keep trying.
I feel like, whats the point, even if I start a brand new project, who's to say it won't do the same thing when I reach some level of detail or satisfaction? I have some older "on hold" projects that I could go back to, but again, who's to say they are not a click away from doing the same crap.

This is why I haven't been around lately. Very depressing.

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Chris

All I can suggest now is to perhaps upload the file and maybe one of us will see something that has been missed by looking at your scene.

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i know what you mean....even now, though I've finished the scene etc, I still have this uncertainty in the back of my mind.... what if it happened again? and i had even worse problems....aside from the black buckets/crashing my render was extremely spotty and grainy, and all sorts of shit kept happening....even my final render had some glitches, albeit small ones, which i managed to correct somewhat in photoshop...
i'll show you a problem below which you might not notice at first glance, but it's pretty bad, and i left it in - did NOT correct it. i was fed up.

take a look at the TV screen, and tell me what those small square-patterns are....they are NOT from the window grill either

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

No clue what they are. strange. That render is really nice by the way. You should plus it with a quick volume light pass to give it some extra mood!

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And post it in your gallery. It's a really good image.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]