Items Are No Longer Showing As Installed Inside Daz Studio
IceDragonArt
Posts: 12,759
So, I've noticed that multiple (by multiple, I mean probably 1/4 of my products which makes it about 2000 items) are no longer showing up in my library. Okay, they are showing up as installed but they are empty with the dreaded exclamation point/triangle in a box. DIM says they are still installed and interestingly enough, its showing up as wanting to install via Connect. I have zero interest in installing via connect. So now I have to go through my entire library, uninstall whatever is missing and re install via DIM (this works, I've done it with several of the missing items). So how does this happen and how do I stop it from happening again? You can imagine how much time this is going to cost me. Updating the meta data does nothing. I'm feeling very frustrated at the moment, with the size of my library, if I didn't categorize, I would never know that these items were even missing.
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I had this happen as well and nothing I did would fix it.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the items, no change. I tried uninstalling with DIM and then installing directly in DS, no luck.
I was advised to try and do a clean and repair of the database. That worked, but broke everything. So I ended up having to re-download and install everything.
Ya, that's not gonna happen. I am able to get them to show up again if I uninstall via Dim and then re install them. But of course, I have to go through the entire product library line by line to find the ones that are missing. And I have to re put them in the correct custom category. Interestingly enough they seem to all be items that are older, like the 3D Bison, 3D hippo and the Aged for Secret Garden Getaway (can you tell I'm working my way through the A's at the moment?) Although the 3D donkey is fine.
I've just come out of that too. 4.8 stopped exporting my userdata for the second time a couple of months ago and rolling back to an earlier export didn't work this time. So I very reluctantly upgraded to 4.10, reset the database to tidy duplicates and lost a really sizeable chunk of my catagorised items that had been there before resetting and reimporting. The folders tree was still there just not the actual items, across the board - Daz3D, 3rd Party and Freebies, native Daz Studio files and Poser, and my 3 runtimes. Found allot in scan results, catagorised them, then discovered more empty catagories. I've just finished going through every single one of my catagory folders, searching the installed files trying to re-catagorising everything. I went to install the new Iray materials for Anatomy yesterday - and found The Brain still not in my catagories... I have no idea what else is still missing in my catagories, and no way I can see to scan my files to find out what still isn't catagorised.
Where the items show as installed in DIM but not in DS did you check the install location in DIM (right-click on the package>Show Installed Files and look at the top) and make sure that was one of your current DS content directories?
This happened to me a while back. I uninstalled and reinstalled Studio. That was the only thing that would fix the problem.
I just checked that and yes, they are showing in Dim as being installed to my E drive, which is where they should be. I also went into My DazDLibrary content folder and the items are all there, right where they should be. And when I re install via DIM they show up in the same spot, simply replacing the files that were there. Except now DS can see them again, although I do have to put them back into the custom categories manually.
OK, so I've had this happen a couple of times now. Where items were showing as installed before but then suddenly disappear. I generally lose the the 'Categories' folders at the bottom of the 'Content Library' tab as well (below the products superfolder) when this happens. There's generally a 'cannot connect to Postgre SQL CMS' error when this has happened to me (don't remember the exact message now). Are you seeing such a message?
If so...
When it happened to me, (after uninstalling and reinstalling Postgre made no difference) I usually ended up deleting some folders related to this (I found said recommendation somewhere in this forum), with Daz Studio repopulating them afterwords on the next program start, at which point it would allow me to 'log in' inside of Daz (it wouldn't let me log in before that point), but I recently moved said folders off of my 'z' drive and back to 'c' (Z being a ramdisk), so I don't remember exactly which folders I deleted to get cms to reset.
At this point, most of the products would show up again, but I'd have a few stragglers on the 'install' list inside of Daz Studio (Install tab). A few refreshes of the database inside of the Daz Studio app (there's a refresh database option in one of the menus) usually cleared most/all of these stragglers up though, no 'reinstall' required.
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My problem for a while now is that DIM is showing a bunch of files that I've already installed as uninstalled, despite Daz Studio being able to access and use said files Not related to your issue, but it still annoys me...
This happened around the time the cms database first started having issues. I've tried a number of recommendations here (refresh database, etc.) but short of reinstalling them, yeah DIM just doesn't understand. Since we are talking over a thousand files that DIM thinks are MIA, yeah not doing that to my 4G connection (again...).
Since the 'first' cms database reset, no more files have been added to the total number of 'supposedly not installed' files according to DIM, the database seems to be able to find the more recently installed files just fine when I've had to do a 'reset'. Again, ALL of these files ARE available within Daz Studio to me, it's just that DIM is confused...
So, I just set the install sort option to 'recently purchased' (whatever it's callled), and look for good 'ol Abraxis, since he's at the top of my 'Not installed but actually is installed' older list, and just install the files above him (the pro bundle deals may result in 2-4 dozen products in my install cue, so to find the 'bottom' of the new stuff, yeah good 'ol Abraxis)
Since the last time I did this, things have 'held together' for the last 2-3 months, knock on wood... and I've generally been installing around a dozen or more new products (many are freebies) via DIM each week.
The last time this happened to me seemed to coincide with a windows 10 update that I installed (not the most recent one that keeps getting pulled 'cuz Microsoft messed things up here and there), so while it may be coincidental, well I don't think it was...
DIM doesn't use the CMS to tell it what is isntalled (the CMS doesn't store the absolute path of files, for one thing). It uses the .dsx files in the Manifests folder.
So, just to summarize - I'm not getting any error messages, just files that are not showing as downloaded in DS but do show as downloaded in DIM as well as actually being in the correct file structure for DS (in the MyLibrary folders on my E drive). Most to these (90%) are older procucts. Updating meta data does not help. Uninstalling via DIM and re installing fix the problem (at least for now).They do not however show back up in the correct spot in my categories (the category is there, but not populated) This is not the first time its happened. I'm not having any issues with downloading new products via DIM (I still miss those blue bars though!!)
Yeah, I've been leaving those .dsx files behind when I've been backing up that folder (after installing), to save hard drive space. I was just moving the .zip files in the downloads folder to a backup drive, and leaving the .dsx files behind when I was crunched for space. I've cloned that drive to a larger drive since than, and haven't trimmed that folder down recently. But yeah, my logic was that the .dsx files are tiny, and probably meant something to DIM, so leaving them behind seemed like a good idea.
And, when I did the clone, I left everything 'as is' before doing the clone. The files I mentioned were showing up as installed pre-cloned drive, but suddenly were showing as uninstalled in DIM... Not all of them, just about 1/3 of my files at that time.
If the .zip files need to be there too, that's an issue, however... especially for people that need to keep an eye on their HDD/SSD space.
Even if you aren't getting a CMS error, this sounds suspiciously like a corrupted Postgre CMS database (at least with what I've experienced). What you are describing sounds very similar to what I've seen before (once where I could log in, but the category tree was nerfed). It's possible that the 'login' info is still intact, but that some of the database files may be having issues, hence why the category folder is showing as empty.
I've had to reset that database at least 3 times now in the last year. Not sure why it's having issues, but it's been behaving lately so knock on wood.
If nothing else works, it's worth a look at least.
You can see where the database is installed under Edit > Preferences > CMS Settings. As I remember, I just deleted the entire CMS folder (which contains a ContentCluster subfolder and a cmscfg.json), and Daz Studio replaced it on the next restart (and then I did a few refresh database to 'catch' the stragglers after logging in), but I'm hoping someone else might jump in here to verify if they've had a similar issues, and if this is how they fixed it. As I said, I found this tip in a forum post, but it's buried somewhere on this forum.
You could back up said folder to before deleting the database, and swap it back in if there are issues. But this seems like a 'big step' to me, hence why I'm hoping that others can jump in with their experiences r.e. the CMS database becoming partially corrupted.
But, before you do that, you might try replacing the 'default' categories folder, if it's already showing up as empty. You can right click on the 'My Daz 3D Library' folder, and create a category from folder. But I think this might name itself as 'My Daz 3D Library' instead of 'Default', and that this could affect some functionality, so I'm interested in hearing if others have thoughts on how to repopulate the default folder.
I meant the .dsx filse in the Manifests folder, not the ens in the Downloads folder. If you have redirected so that the downloads and manifests go to the same folder then that is your issue as they are serving different purposes.
Again, if the extension said .dsx, I generally leave it behind (the only files I would move is the .zip files). Those files are tiny, no matter where they are. And it still doesn't explain why simply cloning a drive (same drive letter,(just a bigger drive, which should be a 100% perfect copy) would break this, as I haven't repointed anything anywhere as far as DIM is concerned. Dim is in the same place it's always been, directory wise and drive letter-wise, as are the various app folders.
If there was a way to refresh the .dsx files, short of downloading 1000+ packages again, that'd be nice...