Hello Andy, after some investigations, I think that I have found the origin of the problem: In seed_rng.hpp the following code is used: template <typename UniformRandomNumberGenerator> inline void seed(UniformRandomNumberGenerator& rng) { seed_rng seed_gen; boost::generator_iterator<seed_rng> begin(&seed_gen); boost::generator_iterator<seed_rng> end; rng.seed(begin, end); } Problematic is the construction of the end iterator. Looking into the code (boost/generator_iterator.hpp) shows, that the default constructor of generator_iterator does not initialize its member variables. generator_iterator() {} Howerver, the mersenne_twister seed code does compare the two given iterators as shown below (boost/random/). template<class It> void seed(It& first, It last) { int j; for(j = 0; j < n && first != last; ++j, ++first) x[j] = *first; i = n; if(first == last && j < n) throw std::invalid_argument("mersenne_twister::seed"); } As the end iterator is not initialized the way is open for all throwing the invalid_argument exception. Locally, I did solve the problem by patching the default constructor of class generator_iterator. If this is a valid solution of the problem, it would be fine if anyone applies the correction to the boost code. Greetings, Johannes