In order to install a different version of DS alongside another version, you need to install subsequent versions to a different place, such as a custom folder. Don't allow any additional versions to install to the default. The best way to do this is to install manually, rather than letting DIM or Daz Central install it. I have the newest beta, the newest public build and 4.16 installed on the same drive. Theoretically, I can install as many versions as I like, so long as they don't overwrite the last version (so I make a specific folder in my Program Files and install to there for each version).

Good practice if you ever think you might need or want to roll back: as soon as a new beta or public build is released (whichever you like using), download the installers for it and back them up. I have quite a few versions backed up...all the way to when Iray was first introduced. Then, before installing a new version, you'll still have the previous version at least to fall back on.

IM will not let ready to download tab open 

central shows city hall was installed but wasnt showing up in content library so i just uninstalled but IM will not let ready to download tab open up so I cannot reinstall it

when I opened IM it asks me to update something or work offline, i just closed the window thinking this is how my cms connection got messed up on other machine

Thanks for reply.  Uninstall/reinstall DIM.  Rename version 4.20.  Install DS 4.21 via "DAZ Central"

Via DIM, install SceneBuilder beta.

Via DIM, install DS V4.21xx beta.

DIM dialogue box:  "Would you like to save the product filter?"

"No."

Like a EULA agreement that seems to be it.  No install.

Pick "Yes"

Choose the Install Filter Path.

I didn't know there was an install filter much what its path is!  Any ideas?

See, this is what I meant when I said I've got problems phrasing things, and that I confuse myself. The My Daz 3D Library on F is empty. There's still some other things there, like the Render Library and the My Library section. I used the word "content" to only refer to items I've bought, like characters, clothes, props and shaders. You know, what Daz sells. Why I didn't think of scenes and renders as content I don't know. My brain just didn't.

Daz Central did not make a My Library folder on G that I've seen. I had duplicates of My Daz 3D Library in the menu in studio - from both F and G - but there was nothing in the version from F because I had moved everything over to the custom folders on G. (I won't be using the custom folder system, since they were part of the B install, and A works and is the one I'll be using. But that's a different discussion.) I've found only one My Library, the directory that holds scenes and subsets, and it's on F. Maybe there's a copy on G, but I don't know where. I'll have to look again.

DIM and Daz central will use the same install locations - they have diffrent defaults, but whichever you use first will be applied.

Which hair product is this? it is always possible that what you have is just a texture expansion.

Ah thanks, it's not showing in either of those areas so I'm back to thinking that maybe it hasn't installed correctly. I think I read about there being some installation issues if you used DAZ3DIM first, instead of Daz Central. I'm wondering if I should try uninstalling the DAZ3DIM app.

WinterMoon said:

barbult said:

I don't understand what you mean by "I actually do want the documents part still located on F". Removing entries in the Content Directory Manager will not delete anything on your hard drive. It only changes where Daz Studio looks for content. It will not delete your Documents folder from your F drive.

If you want to restore the Content Directory Manager to the state it was in before you deleted entries, click the dot by "Current Directories Copy" at the bottom of the Content Set list. When that dot it highlighted, click Accept. Now "Current Directories" should be set back to what it was originally. You'll have to do the deletes again, avoiding the one you want to keep. But, I think you might be confused about what deleting those entries does.

No, I just meant "My Library" and the stuff which is located in "Documents" under Users/Anne. I want the folders for "My Library" still in that location, rather than moving them to G. 

I'm confused. I understood you to say that the installation on F was empty. Did you just mean that the Daz Studio program installation was empty, not that the content folders were empty? I thought you didn't want any Daz Studio content on F, because you needed the space for other things. If Daz Central is installing to G, how will you update content or uninstall unwanted content from F? How will you avoid duplicate copies of data on F and G?

barbult said:

From your comments above, I believe your Daz Studio installation on drive G is the one launched from your desktop icon, and it is working. It is the installation that was done by Daz Central. Drive G is the one you want to use. So all that is very good news. Correct me if I got any of this wrong.

No, I think you're absolutely right! It really looks like the entirely external Install A is funtional! That's exactly how I want it, if I can keep it like this. 

1) Are you confident that your external drive always mounts as drive G? Does it ever mount with any other drive letter?

Yes, I'm about 99% sure I've never seen any external device connected to this computer show up as anything but G. Then again, every single external device I have takes the G: slot, but since I only ever connect one at the time that's probably fine?

Some people have problems with using an external drive for Daz Studio, because the drive letter would change from time to time. The content Directory Manager is being told to look at G. If your same external drive mounts to a different drive letter in Windows, Daz Studio won't be able to find your content. Since your desktop icon for Daz Studio also points to drive G, if the drive letter changes, that could explain why sometimes you can't launch Daz Studio from that desktop icon. A  drive letter issue could be the root of some of your mysterious intermittent problems. I believe there is a way to ensure that it always mounts as drive G, but I need to research that.

Back when I had the second icon, and an .exe in B that connected to it, I could not see the content installed in the A system when I launched it. Maybe I just didn't looks closely enough, but it looked like it only had access to the "custom" folders I'd connected to it. A has access to both its own content (that DC installed) and the folders that used to belong to B. But, since A seems to be functioning on its own, I really don't need to keep anything on the F: drive at all, do I? Can't I just move what's left in those folders into the corresponding folders in the A installation?

2) Your Content Directory Manager is telling Daz Studio to look for content on drive F and drive G. You want all of your content on G because you need F for other things. So we need to correct the Content Directory Manager paths. I like to be conservative and as safe as possible, so first we will create a backup content set that we can just restore if necessary. This does not back up your content files!

That's fine. I have a whole second external drive full of back-up files already. 

It only backs up the list of places where Daz Studio looks for content.

1. Launch Daz Studio from the icon on your desktop.
2. Open the Content Directory Manager again (directions above on October 19 if you forgot how to open it)
3. In the Content Directory Manager window, at the top, you will see "Content Sets". Right now you have only one content set which is named "Current Directories". We are going to make a copy of that set as a backup before we change it.
4. Click on "Current Directories" to select it.
5. Once you have selected "Current Directories, the Copy button on the left side becomes active.
6. Click the Copy button.
7. A new set will be created called "Current Directories Copy".
8. Click the Accept button. The Content Directory Manager window will close.
9. Open the Content Directory Manager again.
10. Verify that the original "Current Directories" is still the active one (it has the highlighted dot beside it) and there is a new content set named "Current Directories Copy" that has an empty (not highlighted) dot next to it.
11. Now, if our attempt to fix the paths where Daz Studio looks, is unsuccessful, you can go back to what you had in the Content Directory Manager before.

Got it!

3) In your first message, you mentioned that install B on the F drive was completely empty. If that is accurate, then those Content Directory Manager entries for paths on the F drive aren't contributing anything useful, and we can remove them from "Current Directories".

I was going to ask if I couldn't do that. 

We probably need to be a little careful about the Daz Connect Data path. If you ever logged in to Daz Studio, I would expect to find files in the F drive folder listed for the Daz Connect Data. Even if you never installed anything inside Daz Studio, if you are logged in, Daz Studio automatically downloads metadata files. They are small. but they are configured to go on your F drive right now. If you use Daz Central for content installation, there is no need to log in to your Daz account from inside Daz Studio.  If you are set up to automatically log in, we should change that to avoid other troubles.

I don't have automatic log-in. OK, the Daz Connect Data can stay. So now I just toss out all the paths to old F: that's not the DCD?

I meant to comment earlier that you should feel free to redact any sensitive personal data, so good for you for doing that.

From your comments above, I believe your Daz Studio installation on drive G is the one launched from your desktop icon, and it is working. It is the installation that was done by Daz Central. Drive G is the one you want to use. So all that is very good news. Correct me if I got any of this wrong.

1) Are you confident that your external drive always mounts as drive G? Does it ever mount with any other drive letter? Some people have problems with using an external drive for Daz Studio, because the drive letter would change from time to time. The content Directory Manager is being told to look at G. If your same external drive mounts to a different drive letter in Windows, Daz Studio won't be able to find your content. Since your desktop icon for Daz Studio also points to drive G, if the drive letter changes, that could explain why sometimes you can't launch Daz Studio from that desktop icon. A  drive letter issue could be the root of some of your mysterious intermittent problems. I believe there is a way to ensure that it always mounts as drive G, but I need to research that.

2) Your Content Directory Manager is telling Daz Studio to look for content on drive F and drive G. You want all of your content on G because you need F for other things. So we need to correct the Content Directory Manager paths. I like to be conservative and as safe as possible, so first we will create a backup content set that we can just restore if necessary. This does not back up your content files! It only backs up the list of places where Daz Studio looks for content.

1. Launch Daz Studio from the icon on your desktop.
2. Open the Content Directory Manager again (directions above on October 19 if you forgot how to open it)
3. In the Content Directory Manager window, at the top, you will see "Content Sets". Right now you have only one content set which is named "Current Directories". We are going to make a copy of that set as a backup before we change it.
4. Click on "Current Directories" to select it.
5. Once you have selected "Current Directories, the Copy button on the left side becomes active.
6. Click the Copy button.
7. A new set will be created called "Current Directories Copy".
8. Click the Accept button. The Content Directory Manager window will close.
9. Open the Content Directory Manager again.
10. Verify that the original "Current Directories" is still the active one (it has the highlighted dot beside it) and there is a new content set named "Current Directories Copy" that has an empty (not highlighted) dot next to it.
11. Now, if our attempt to fix the paths where Daz Studio looks, is unsuccessful, you can go back to what you had in the Content Directory Manager before.

3) In your first message, you mentioned that install B on the F drive was completely empty. If that is accurate, then those Content Directory Manager entries for paths on the F drive aren't contributing anything useful, and we can remove them from "Current Directories". We probably need to be a little careful about the Daz Connect Data path. If you ever logged in to Daz Studio, I would expect to find files in the F drive folder listed for the Daz Connect Data. Even if you never installed anything inside Daz Studio, if you are logged in, Daz Studio automatically downloads metadata files. They are small. but they are configured to go on your F drive right now. If you use Daz Central for content installation, there is no need to log in to your Daz account from inside Daz Studio.  If you are set up to automatically log in, we should change that to avoid other troubles.

Hi Guys, suffering the frustrating problem of not being able to add hair to my character to get her finished off. It should be compatible with my AIko 3 character (Amanda hair) but just won't show up.

I'm wondering if this may be to do with it not having loaded up properly? I tried loading it from Daz Central and have reinstalled Daz 3D from there incase of issues, but I do still have a DAZ3DIM app on my computer too - should it be there?

The hair shows in the content library but not on any other tabs.

Thanks!

 Recently I am missing more and more product icons in my Content view.  Current example is the new Victoria 9 product.  I have uninstalled and re-installed, and updated metadata to no avail.  I assume the product icon is located in the Support Folder in My DAZ Connect Library/data/cloud/1_87472/runtime/support

I have attached both a screen shot of my Smart Content view and the JPG from the support folder.  This product has been missing the icon since I originally downloaded the product the day it was released.  I install everything via Smart Content, I have DIM but only use that to install/update programs and I do have DAZ Central.

The product works correctly.

Any help would be appreciated.

barbult said:

It's bedtime here. I'll study this over tomorrow and see what sense I can make of it and what else I need to ask. You did a great job providing information.

Thank you and thank you!  I'll check back later tonight.

A couple questions come to mind already:

1. Those Genesis 1, Genesis 2,etc. folders are not standard library folders. Are those what you referred to as your custom folder system?

Yes. I connected them to Studio via the Content Directory Manager. My friend told me how to do it, and it worked, so yay? I'm not sure I'm going to need those folders, but more about that later! I've made some interesting discoveries.

1. Have you ever installed a product from inside Daz Studio with the Install pane or from Smart Content pane? (That is called Daz Connect, not to be confused with Daz Central.) This is important to know, because if you did, those installs take precedence over Daz Central or DIM,  and they install to a whole other file structure. If the same product is installed from inside Daz Studio with Daz Connect and also installed with Daz Central, the Daz Central install will be ignored by Daz Studio. It is a horrible scheme that Daz has come up with, to have so many conflicting install methods. If you are not sure whether you ever installed from inside Daz Studio, we can investigate to confirm whether you did.

No, as far as I can remember I've never used Daz Connect, and I don't even have the Smart Content category because some SQL nonsense. But that's a problem for another day. What I have done is install things manually, by plopping them into folders. Freebies from other sites, and Rendo purchases, etc. But that shouldn't be a problem, right? 

It's bedtime here. I'll study this over tomorrow and see what sense I can make of it and what else I need to ask. You did a great job providing information. A couple questions come to mind already:

1. Those Genesis 1, Genesis 2,etc. folders are not standard library folders. Are those what you referred to as your custom folder system?
2. Have you ever installed a product from inside Daz Studio with the Install pane or from Smart Content pane? (That is called Daz Connect, not to be confused with Daz Central.) This is important to know, because if you did, those installs take precedence over Daz Central or DIM,  and they install to a whole other file structure. If the same product is installed from inside Daz Studio with Daz Connect and also installed with Daz Central, the Daz Central install will be ignored by Daz Studio. It is a horrible scheme that Daz has come up with, to have so many conflicting install methods. If you are not sure whether you ever installed from inside Daz Studio, we can investigate to confirm whether you did.

Been using it for a while with no problems. Since last night it is being strange and showing old and new products mixed in together with todays date on all orders.  Started last night, thought it was fixed earlier today when V9 was at the top of my purchases but now it is whacky again showing as mixed again.  My purchased date range from  2001 - 2022.

Where do I go for help with Daz Central, I could not find a forum for it?

Is anyone else experiencing this? 

Attached a couple of screen shots to show it is different each time I go in. My settings have remained the same since installation. 

VicS said:

youre right

it was working fine,havent changed any settings, dont know if i need to be online to have products even show up in the content library but the computer is online

You don't need to be online, but you do need to have PostgreSQL installed, it should run when Daz Studio (or Daz Central/Install Manager) run, and it needs to be able to communicate (it uses Internet Protocol, but only locally). What security software do you use? Do you see postgresql processes in Task Manager (with More Details on) when Studio or one of the installers is running?

frank0314 said:

How did you install the package? Can you browse to the location and see if the files are there? Sorry, I'm setting up a new machine and don[t have DS installed yet.

 manually and through Daz central

Hey! Not sure if this belongs here or elsewhere, but I'm wondering if there's a way to stop Daz Central from claiming Daz Studio isn't updated\installed just because I haven't installed the Genesis 9 Essentials package?

I have no interest in Gen9 right now, probably wont for many years, and the essentials take up far too much space. Central sees them as an update for Daz Studio for some reason, and even DIM keeps trying to get me to install them with that annoying popup each time I use it. Any way to stop this?

Thanks in advance. :)

I think I can help you with some of this. You explained it well. It doesn't sound like you have made any serious mistakes.

1. The Daz Studio program and your content (props, figures, clothes, hair, etc.) don't have to be on the same hard drive. You can run Daz Studio from your "B" installation while your content is on "A". Don't waste space making duplicate copies of content.
2. One problem you might have is updating the Daz Studio program on "B" if Daz Central insists on putting it on "A" . I haven't used Daz Central, so someone else will have to help you configure it properly. I use DIM. But let's not worry about that yet.

Give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts on what we need to do first.

I'm seeing some really strange behavior.  Daz Central wants to "upgrade" to 4.15, but I have 4.21 installed currently.

Also, I'm pretty sure I remember the most recent Daz Central update fixing the bug where it freezes every time I try to download something, but DAZ Central just forced me to install a Daz Central update, and now it is back to SPODing every time I tell it to download something.  (Time to switch back to DIM.)

Does anybody have any idea what's going on with Daz's versioning?

(Platform is macOS Monterey on M1 Max hardware)

DISCLAIMER: I'm very bad at explaining problems, because when I get stressed my brain confuses itself. If you don't understand what I'm trying to say, that's ok. I don't really understand it myself either!

Basically, I've ended up with two separate installs of Daz Studio. One of them - let's call it Install A - seems to exist entirely on an external harddrive (G:), where Daz Central installed it without my knowledge. I set DC up to put my downloads there, so verything I install goes to Install A. (Including an extra copy of DS itself.) However, A cannot be launced, because apparently DS can't live on an external device or something? If there's a way to actually launch and use A, that would be neat.

The other one - Install B - lives on one of my two desktop drives, (called F:). B is completely empty. My online best friend walked me through how to make Studio recognize external directories. (I'm sorry if I mess up the terminology - I'm talking about the folder hierarchy where items are stored.) We successfully managed to get Install B to pull items from custom folders on G, the external drive. The problem is that I had already uninstalled around half of the Studio content I had in B, via the uninstall function in Daz Central. I needed disc space! So yeah, every single scene and subset is missing a few items. 

Now here's the problem. Install A is probably completely useless. Howevz, Daz Central installed a lot of the content missing from B into it, before I discovered there was another whole DS installation in there. I guess I could copy and paste all of that back into B, but I do not want it stored on my F: drive. I need space on there for my other things! I want it in the custom folders associated with B - which also exist on the external device but should be completely separate from Install A. Can I copy it from A into those custom folders, or would that make things just.... worse?

Also, I completely failed at getting things to install properly into my custom folder system, so I need to let DC do the job for me. I have really bad inattentive ADHD, and I mean really bad, I mean actual neuro-divergency level bad, and so I always have to try not to get confused to the level where the mess in my head carries over into other things I need to do during the day. That's why I have to do things certain ways that seem backwards to others. Either I have to let things go to A first and copy them from there, or I need to redirect Central back to the original file hierarchy on F: (which is still intact, just empty) and copy from there. Can I do it this way, without messing things up further?

Am I making any sense here? I've confused people while trying to explain much simpler things. Screenshots can be made, if there's any specific thing you want to get a visual of.

Thanks in advance for reading this and being willing to try helping!