I think I may have to uninstall and reinstall all my product files
Charlie Judge
Posts: 13,376
in The Commons
A few months ago I moved nearly all my content to a a new external drive. Now I have started getting missing files errors when I try to load the products that are on that drive. I think I have traced the problem to the disappearance of the 'Runtime/Geometries' folder, which seems to no longer exist. Any suggestions other than uninstalling all 23K products and then downloading and reinstalling them ?
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You say "nearly all your content". You moved whole libraries, right, not just folders of stuff? What did not move? That folder is only needed for Poser formats, so how many of those do you have? Might it still be in the original location?
Just reinstall those products that complain about missing files when you try to load them.
I moved them by using DIM to uninstall them from my C drive and then had DIM download them and install them on my H Drive; so, the libraries were created as needed on the H drive. A bout the only things I didn't move were M4 , V4 and their various morph packs as well as things essential to DS like Postgre
I may be able to save some time by skipping the uninstall step and renaming the DIM Manifest folder instead. Even so, downloading and ind installing 23 thosand products is daunting.
Wait ... you did NOT move the M4 V4 stuff? So isn't it still on your C drive? Or did you delete the directory?
If you left them where they were, what happened to the old runtime/geometries directory?
The old runtime/geometries directory is still on my C drive; BUT it only has files for the few products like M4 and V4 that I left on the C: drive. It all the other stuff that I now have on the external H drive that has missing files when I try to load it into DS.
That would be fine if were only a few products. Howver, it is virtually all the products that use geometries and that would mean leaving DS and going to DIM every time I try to load a product. That makes creating a scene a real pain.
Thanks for all your replies. At this point I have decided to go ahead and rename the DIM Manifest folder and have started DIm downloading everything I expect it may take a few days and I'm headed off to bed.
Not only "poser", often materials/textures go there as well.
...\Runtime\Geometries\ is used exclusively for Poser geometries (OBJ)
...\Runtime\Textures... and ...\Runtime\Support... are used also by DS characters, props and stuff...
I could understand you getting missing files errors if you try to open an old scene where the file links have been moved, but I have never experienced any problem opening indivual files after moving them to an external drive.
It's crucial that the wholesale Poser library structure is maintained when moving libraries about. Rather than moving indivual folders to the external, you should move the entire Poser Runtime. Sorry I can't help beyond that.
This is the Drive I use for Daz and 3D in general.
You'll notice I have the manifest that is kept on the C drive there too.
The folder just named Daz 3D contains the files downloaded via DIM, as well as third party downloads.
There are no issues with moving where everything is by default; issues will arrive if that move is not done correctly, with either missing files, duplicate files, or library folders not added to both DIM and to Studio. Not all the folders in Daz 3D All Libraries are added to DIM or Studio, and some added to Studio are not used by DIM, and consequently not added.
I don't touch Smart Content as I have various issues with it, including I don't think it is close to smart.
I also don't tough Daz Central (another abomination IMO).
It looks like it may take about two days to download everything.
Question: Once they are downloaded will there be any problems if I reinstall the products without first having uninstalled them ?
DIM has a "Re-Install Package(s)" option on the "Installed" tab's context menu. But that requires that DIM sees the product as installed which again requires that it's pointing to the folder with the Manifest files for the installed files.
If that's not the case I imagine that it overwrites any existing files if you ask it to install a product as "new", which I don't think will cause any problems as long as the Manifest files DIM generates are organized correctly. The path to the Library a product is installed into is hardcoded into its Manifest files so if you change the library path they don't match anymore which will confuse DIM (or at least it used to, I'm not sure how the later versions handles this, possibly they may fix the path in the Manifest files automatically if you change it).
If you install to a different location without uninstalling from the old, you'll have products showing up twice (unless you don't use the old location any more). If you install on top of an existing install, you need to have DIM fix the installed file registry, otherwise DIM will think there's another product that needs those files and won't uninstall them if you uninstall the product.
How do I have DIM fix the installed files registry ?
The .dsx file in the Downloads folder and the one in the ManifestFiles folder are not the same. When DIM installs something it takes the .dsx file in the Downloads folder, the manifest.dsx and supplement.dsx from the .zip, and the information on where it installed each file and puts it all in a new .dsx file in the ManifestFiles folder. So just copying the .dsx file from Downloads to ManifestFiles will mae DIM think it installed the product, but it won't have the information needed to uninstall.
To uninstall a product using DIM that was manually installed:
1) Install the product again with DIM
2) In DIM, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > Installation; at the bottom is a list of your content folders and their paths.
3) Right-click on the content folder path you used and choose "Fix Installed File Registry".
4) Now uninstall the product with DIM,
Notes: The reason you need to do it this way is because if DIM finds a file that already exists when it tries to install it, DIM assumes it's from another product that uses the same file. It creates a file named "InstallManagerFileRegister.json" in that content folder listing all the files that are installed by multiple products and the number of products that need each file, so when you uninstall one product it knows there are other products that need the file. "Fix Installed File Registry" rewrites that .json file using only the information in the ManifestFiles .dsx files, so it won't count files that were installed manually as a separate product. There will be a bunch of error messages in the log which you can ignore -- since it only applies to content, ,dsx files for software and plugins get written to the log as errors.