Is there easy way to uninstall a manually installed product, if you have the original zip/rar file?
vozolgant
Posts: 207
in The Commons
Is there easy way to uninstall a manually installed product, if you have the original zip/rar file?
Imagine specifying the original rar file, then it just removes it from the DAZ runtime folder.
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No, that is the only thing the installers do and you can't do with manually installed ones.
You need to look at the installation file and see, where everything is located and remove the files from those locations also manually.
That's pretty sad. DAZ Studio came out in 2005, and even after 16 years, we still don't have a way to uninstall manually installed products. DAZ developers really dropped the ball here.
It doesn't matter when studio came out, I don't know of any software whatsoever to offer uninstallers for manual installations. If you want to remove them, check what's in the zip and remove those files from where you placed them.
But if they're characters, things like eyebrows and nails might be shared between mutliple products, so better leave those alone.
Which is why they developed DIM and Central so you don't have to install manually. That always been a drawback on every place that uses zips. Thats not any one companies fault. It's the nature of zips. It's the general risk you take with installing manually.
In theory, it is possible and not very difficult. I did that some month ago with a simple linux script and something similar can be done with windows.
The main problem is that it is very unsafe. Several PAs use the same files for different products (and this is a good idea to limit disk space not to duplicate for instance identical shaders). Once the product is installed, you have no way to know if a given file may be useful for other assets.
One of the main interest of DIM is that it keeps track of this information and knows the number of reference to every file. If the user ask to suppress an asset, it only removes a file if this asset is the only one that installed the file.
If you install something manually, obviously you will need to uninstall it manually. There's just no way for Daz programmers to create an "uninstaller" for manually installed content. 3rd-party content creators can package their products to work with DIM, but some of them either don't know how, don't want to learn how, or find it more trouble than its worth. For people like myself, its much easier to just manually install it rather than mess about with DIM trying to figure out how to install it and possibly screw something up.
Most products should come with a Read Me containing a file list & where everything goes with respect to file/folder locations(the only thing that can differ between users is base directory locations depending in where they chose to install their content). You have to use that as your checklist and go through and delete them. Yeah, its a pain in the ass, and I've seen single products that have over 4,000 files
but it is what it is, unfortunately. Depending on how big your 3rd party content library is and how badly you want to remove the product, it might be easier to just delete that base directory inside Daz Studio Formats, navigate to the file location in WIndows and delete the folder, make a new base directory for your 3rd party content in Daz Studio, then reinstall all of your 3rd party content.
I wrote a python script that does this. I hadn't intended to share it, but if you're interested I could give you a copy. I don't have an installer created for it, so you may need to install python and some python libraries on your machine for it to work.
For windows, just open zip, drag/drop into library, click overwrite when asked. Then right click in the library window where you just dragged the file into, and click undo copy. It will delete the newly copied files.
Oh, a small addendum, it will leave empty folders behind though. So you probably need to find user facing folders at least to delete them. Empty runtime or data folders wont mess anything up, empty folders in the library can be annoying to look at.
Thank you RL_Media. Finally, a simple practical answer.
what I do is unzip the original zip to a floder, and the use the Content Package Assist to create a DIM compatible installer.. If its something I have manually installed, I re-install it with the newly created file, which if I then use DIM to uninstall, should remove the manually installed files - it works in most situations, plus it leabes me with a DIM installer should I wish to re-install
If you have to go and find and delete folders, you might as well skip the first step and just delete the folders with the files still in them.
I used to use CPA until Content Wizard arrived. Having the install files for DIM was great, but unfortunately it did not create smart content. If only there was a program that could do both for third-party-store assets, I'd be all over it.
A manual uninstall is the easy way. Check the zip file structure, open the folders. Remove. Takes abour a minute
I remember there was a freeware allowing to do it but I can't find it...
Content Wizard creates a ZIP file that can be used with DIM. And yes, once installed with DIM, it can be uninstalled with DIM as well, including Smart Content.
This doesn't work.
This one can do it, currently only with zips though. It's currently in beta, so time limited, will expire 2022-08-31.
https://3dcontentmanagers.com/software/continst/
Found the freeware I was talking about in my previous post. It's not a plug-in but a software. It's here:
https://sharecg.com/v/43320/browse/10/Software-and-Tools/Daz-Studio-Archive-Installer
Here is the description text from the Share CG page:
This is a GUI for Daz Studio and Poser to install content distributed in Zip and Rar archives. Apart from installing, it can also uninstall content installed with this program. You can do a batch installation, or single instances. View the contents of an archive, convert a Rar to Zip, and more
When you start the software you get a warning saying that it's a demo but it is fully functional and doesn't expire.
Hope this helps.
One option is use a Duplicate File Finder program; unzip the archive to a different directory. Use the DFF to compare the unzipped location to your content directory.
Hiya,
I have just shared a Python script called "Daz Studio Asset File Remover", over in ShareCG. It recursively read files and folders from Source directory, and delete them from Target directory. The Source directory would be a folder where asset files would be unpacked into, as if it was "My DAZ 3D Library." The Target directory would be the real "My DAZ 3D Library." Once you are done, you can delete the Source directory.
Python is required and the script runs on the command line console.
No DIM no manifest files required. Definitely back-up your asset files, and do dry runs on test folders before hand.
Hope you'll find it useful.
-Blu
Would using a different content directory for manually installed stuff make sense?
Just for a new installation, i have a similar situation. Though, if i remember right, in case of having accidentally installed or updated products with Studio, that had initially been installed by DIM, i think the support had told me, i should do a complete reinstall. Not sure i understood the context of "complete" right, though.
I am not sure if anyone have thought about using versioning, such has GIT, like they do in software development, to capture changes, not only in the library files, but also in your designs. For library files, I would maintain different set of assets, for performance and productivity. For design files, I could rollback to earlier designs if poses or lighting don't work out.
I am digressing, sorry...
What if you installed them again using DIM? Wouldn't that overwrite the old files and then you could uninstal with DIM?
If the question is directed at me:
This time i tried to install everything with DIM.
Some product refused to download, for a while.
Daz Studio allowed installing it (mistake), and i ran updates repeatedly with Studio, because it showed it had some.
That's the situation for me. Apparently, installation, updates and moving content to other directories... could use some improvements.
Edit: Sorry i misread here.
It looks like there is some oddities under the hood, like DIM and Studio keeping different kinds of databases and maybe for script or plugin-compatibility they can't easily change it around. It feels a little bit like a let-down, though, not even having an integrity checking method that checks all types of installations, but maybe there is a reason for that too. Detection of issues and repair would really be a pretty useful thing.
What a clever solution! Thanks for the info.
What I do with 3rd party stuff:
1. Merge the ZIPs if there are more then one
2. Install with Content Wizard which creates also Smart Content
3. Create a new installer with Content Wizard and delete the original ZIPs
4. Delete the new product created AND the installed files. This is a bit annoying but needs to be done
5. Move the installer created with Content Wizard to the packages folder
6. Re-Start DIM
Result: The 3rd party content is now inside DIM. From there I can install AND uninstall at any time
decided to build my own as i got tired of check and removing installed content, especially when the daz installer leaves files installed.
what to add other features but this works well in cleaning up my installed content.
can download from here.
https://sharecg.com/v/100392/view/10/Software-and-Tools/daz-file-checker