rules not working and unable to test

[hasher21u]

same issue as poster here: https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-9763-post-51233.html

Code:

hashcat -b

works fine, at least starts ok. but

Code:

.\hashcat.exe -r .\test.txt --stdout .\wordlists\dict.txt

doesnt

any ideas? i updated cuda and nvidia drivers to latest as well and no change