Maya 2011 crashes loading file from new version

Maya 2010 has been very buggy the last few days just as Im ready to render every time it crashes, I've looked far and wide for a solution and couldn't clear the errors even re-installing didn't seem to work so the great news is I installed maya 2011 for free from there education community site. Problems occured there as well, fur rendered fine in this version but as soon as I imported my scene from maya 2010 or maya 2012 (yes I have all three versions, mainly because my different plugins are only licensed for older versions!)

so rather than bog things down in rendering Ive created a unique and rather crazy workaround (hey its about getting the job done right?) I've rendered my scenes with all the layers in maya 2012 and then exported the camera and lighting data as an fbx to maya 2011 (where I have shave and a haircut installed.) Then I've rendered the fur separately from there and I am in the process of compositing now. Below are some pics.

The basic horse head render (maya 2012)

the hair/fur render with its alpha channel (maya 2011)

A test composite in photoshop adding the fur on as a screen blend layer with adjustment to levels etc.