CMS not starting and ignoring me

Ryselle-Ryssa

Hi!

I have a fresh installation of DAZ Studio on a new Windows 11 PC and cannot get Smart Content to work.
DAZ Studio 2025 (6.25) keeps showing the error:

"Resource error: A valid PostgreSQL CMS connection could not be established."

 

What I see / What is happening

• In Install Manager → Advanced Settings → CMS Settings, the Cluster Directory is set to:
  C:/Users/me/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/cms

• That directory contains a cmscfg.json with:

  {
      "DatabaseClusterPath" : "C:\\Users\\<me>\\AppData\\Roaming\\DAZ 3D\\cms",
      "Port" : 17237
  }

 

Solutions tried

• I opened port 17237 on the firewall, but it didn’t help.

• When clicking the CMS icon (the three stacked disks) in Install Manager and telling it to start the CMS, nothing happens.

  The log only says:

  “Error Starting CMS – Cannot be started by client.”

   

• Attempts to use the old CMS from the previous, working, installation on old pc

  I moved the old drive from my previous machine, which contained a working CMS folder:
  R:/Other/DAZ_CMS

• I tried to point Install Manager to this folder, but:

  • It never saves the changed path — it always snaps back to the default AppData path.

  • Editing the path manually inside cmscfg.json also does nothing.

  • Copying the old CMS folder contents into the new one also does nothing

Result

• The error stays the same no matter what I try: DAZ Studio cannot connect to PostgreSQL CMS and Smart Content is unavailable.

 

Thank you for any help in advance ♥

 

Richard Haseltine

Is the actual application, PostgreSQL, installed? In the same version (32/64 bit, ideally the same release channel) as on your previous system. 

Ryselle-Ryssa

Hi! Yes, it was installed, but double, one from the "normal" version, one from the alpha. And somehow this collided. After removing all DAZ versions except die Alpha, it now works fine :-)

Richard Haseltine

Usually installing one version of PostgreSQL will remove any others, so that is odd.

Ryselle-Ryssa

I sadly cannot explain what was going on under the hood of the system, just that it somehow solved the problem ^^