maya 7 PLE problems

I'm not sure if maya works anything like max but usually that means you have your viewports setup for the wrong renderer. Ex. directx, software, Ogl. I would try changing your render type.

Hey
Try to restore to default settings go to window/settings/performances/performances
on the top left click edit then restore to default settings
if this don't work you mite need to update you video drivers.
just for a test make a cube then hit the F_key <-- should zoom to the cube if its a camera clipping issue.

Hi, it cant be a driver issue (I dont think!) because i got one of the viewports to work by accident - so now I just have the other 3 to go (top, side, front)- If one is working, then it must be some setting or something that is individual for each viewport if my reasoning is correct.

When i press "F", the viewports do the usual zooming in/centering, and during this process I CAN see whatever I should be able to, but then once the centering/zooming process is complete its dissappears again

Did you try to restore to default settings? you can also set the camera clipping
in window/settings/performances/performances left side box "camera" set Near clip 0.001 Far clip 10000.000.
I suggested drivers because the same thing happened to me before and a new video driver salved the issue my opengl drivers did not install properly.

Everything is restored to default setting, nearclip & farclip is set correctly.

Here is a screenshot of what I see in the viewports after hitting "F" for each one:

What I can see

Sorry to here your still having issues after reset to default settings
if you have a Nvidia card this link mite help as well.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=128410

Thanks. . . the strangest thing is, I have installed maya 7 PLE once before a few weeks ago, and it worked fine!!

Hm, looks like it would be a near/far clipping issue, but you seem to have tried that, something I've noticed in maya 7 is that F tends to zoom out a lot sometimes, generally if you have deselected you geometry, have you tried setting the near/far clip and gone to View->Default Home. Also try changing the linear working units.