Fully deleting DAZ content without DIM
grinch2901
Posts: 1,247
I have never had good luck with the CMS database or DIM actually keeping track of what's installed. It seems nobody else experiences this but once again for the umpteenth time DIM has decided that I have no content installed. I certainly do. The bad news is that I can't tell what I have installed and what I don't via DIM so it's hard to say "do I have that old christmas wreath freebie installed" and get an easy answer.. The worse news is that for content that I do have installed, I cannot uninstall it via DIM. Of course my content is also co-mingled with stuff from other sources, even stuff I made myself and there's no too to uninstall that cleanly. By cleanly I mean delete all files associated with it. Textures, geometry, data, etc.
Back in the poser days there was a tool that you could point to a file like a CR2 and it would read the file, find all the referenced files in y your runtime (textures, geometries, etc) and if you clicked okay it would delete them all. Boom! no more zombie files hat you couldn't hunt down manually killing your hard drive space. I would LOVE to be able to do that with DAZ. I'm hoping someone here can point me to an existing tool that can do that. Any luck?
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I can't think of anything with such easy pushbutton access. Really, the closest things I can think of are Dimension3D's content gatherer, and file refernce editor although neither is exactly designed for what you want to do - Gatherer, as the name implies, collect all the files related to a scene to create a zip file, while the Reference editor traces out where files are supposed to be and allows you to edit the references.
Rats. It seems that since there is lots of content from sources other than DAZ such a tool might exist to completely and safely remove content purchased from 3rd party sites but I guess people just deal with it manually. Bummer. Thanks.
GIve it a few days so some of the real nuts and bolts people like Richard Haseltine can comment.. It wouldn't be the first time that there was something out there that I wasn't aware of... and there's always the chance that some PA will say - I know how to do that! and drop it in the store as a product.
I'm actually working on an uninstaller like that, it works that way that you select a zip file and it will tell you if the content is installed or not. Can't uninstall yet but that's next step.
Did you, per chance, delete the content of your Downloaded files folder?
If yes, that might be the problem. I ran into the "DIM wants to reinstall everything" issue myself a couple of times, and in those cases I usually deleted the .dsx files along with the zips.
Turns out, DIM needs those dsx files to "check" on what content is downloaded or not. Reinstall them in the folder, and viola, the content is marked as "downloaded". At least, that's what solved my problems. The source of yours could be totally different, of course.
Ooh. I'll keep an eye out for that, that would do it!
I may have. I muck around in there because I do have a tool sold here that makes DIM packages so I can easily install / uninstall 3rd party stuff so I manually chuck stuff in the DIM folder occasionally. So let's say I did, where do you get dsx filed from? Don't they get extracted when you install via DIM? I've seen them magivally appear during an install but I don't know another way to get them.
EDIT: Okay, I didn't delete them but they are gone. I checked out the location for manifest files in DIM and that folder is one I never ever go into. And it's empty except for the files I just recently installed so that explains it but no idea where they went in the first place.
It's ctually the Manfests folder, not the Downloads folder, that tells DIM what it has installed. The .dsx files in the Downlods folder serve a different purpose.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/install_manager/referenceguide/tech_articles/package_supplement_file/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/install_manager/referenceguide/tech_articles/install_manifest/start
That's definitely something that I'd pick up in a heartbeat.
Ready to purchase as soon as released!
https://www.daz3d.com/content-gatherer could identify the files. It can't tell whether those files are needed by other products, however. If you installed them manually with DIM-compatible zips, or if you installed with DIM and lost the Manifests folder, there is a way to reinstall with DIM and trick it into thinking they weren't installed before, so DIM can uninstall them. If you've moved files around, though, that won't work.
I've been considering adding that feature to the one I'm working on, should be fairly easy. Detecting if a file is shared by other products can also be added.
Currently it can install/uninstall all or selected files for a product file (both DAZ and 3rd party), and tell if the content of a zip file is installed or if there are missing or corrupt files. Support for multiple runtimes/libraries.
Here's a video demo of the current features - if a file is Green it is installed, Light Green if Checksum (CRC32) Compare is off, Dark Green if it's on. Yellow means file is not installed in the selected runtime, Red means that the file is installed but Checksum doesn't match the one in the zip. "Installed" means installed on the default location (default zip extraction path), an option for checking if files that are not found on default location are installed elsewhere in selected runtime (e.g. moved by the user) is in the works.
https://www.screencast.com/t/cQQKS3LJkv
Looks great! But will only works on zip files or if you browse to poser content files will work too?
Over on renderosity there's something called P3DO explorer. I haven't found the equivalent for DAZ content yet.
Thanks, that looks helpful. Generally for DAZ sold content I use DIM and can uninstall using it IF DIM doesn't somehow forget that I did that install (which has now happened a lot). When that happens two bad things happen: it cannot uninstall it (I don't know the trick you refer to) and the list of avaialble content has all the things I already have installed as well as ones I don't, so it's really hard to figure out which ones I really want to install (without getting dupes installed). I do move files around because I do not like vendor names being the directory name (I don't know who made what and it's a pain to navigate that way). So I sort content by type (houses, funiture, formal wear, sports wear, etc). So ideally I'd want to point it to a file in my library and have it read all the references and list them. I can manuall delete from there if need be.
It just comes down to me having too much stuff!
Not sure what you mean by "Poser content files" ?
Well what it does is using the data in the zip (file data and install paths) to look for the files in the runtime, and that includes all files/file types in the product. If a file in the zip is in the selected runtime it will be listed (marked green) and you can delete it (or restore it if it's missing, corrupted or whatever). Or you can install the complete product with one click, if it isn't installed, or just install selected files if you want.
I think he's asking if it can work if you don't have the zip of the product.
No, that won't work with this method. I am however working on making it able to also find product files moved by the user, so these can be deleted too, but it still requires the installer zips to find these, using the zip's CRC32 file checksums to identify the files in the library/runtime. And maybe also an option for installing selected files in a different location than the zip default.
Same here that would rock!
Why not just delete the runtime and then reinstall what you want? Unless of course you have stuff in there that you don't want to delete and no longer have the installers for.
In any case I'll take a look at it, l just have to finish some other stuff I'm working on first.