Third party content doesn't work on my second machine
Cervcity
Posts: 16
Hi all
I recently moved my content library on an external HDD in order to be able to work with DAZ on two different machines. DAZ works well on both computers, but I'm experiencing issues with third-party content on the second one (on which I installed DAZ studio one year after the very first installation on the other machine). My content library is complete, no folders are missing, and all files and icons are present. On both computers the content library structure shows identical. But on the faulty one, when I try to load third-party items in the scene, most articles give out the error "an error occurred while reading the file. See the log file for details". Also, If I save a scene containing a third-party item with the first machine and then open it with the other one, the item itself appears as grey bounding boxes.
All items coming from the DAZ 3D store work fine on both machines, instead. Any idea what could be causing this issue?
On both systems I'm using DAZ 4.12.0.86
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Comments
Sounds like you're missing some of the "data" files for these items.
Is the content installed on both machines, or do you use the external drive as a shared drive?
it's a shared drive. Works 100% fine on one machine, while it doesn't as good on the other one.
Are you sure all the content directories match, and are in the same order (might be a factor if there are two versions of a file in two different directories, one of which includes spurious calls that aren't in the other).
I don't know, I don't think so. I never messed with the content directories. The only thing I do to install third-party content is to unpack the zip files into the library. And again, it's a shared drive, if there was something wrong with the content library, it wouldn't work on either one of my PCs.
look at the log file. It will say what it can't find. I bet it can't find the runtime folder.
If it's on a shared drive then you must have told DS where the content directories were at least once - perhaps you haven't on the second machine, which would certainly explain your issue.
Also, when DS saves a scene using custom content or content which is not in DS native format it saves files in the "data" directory of the first DS content directory listed. If that folder is not on your external drive you would miss those data files.
The log file says nothing about trying to load some content and failing at it. It only reports the error text "An error occurred while reading the file. See the log file for details". Pretty useless
You mean DAZ3D\Studio\My Library\data? I have it on my external drive, and it's addressed correctly in my content directory manager. I followed all the discussions on the forum about how to migrate the content library on external drives. On both PCs I set up the content directory manager exactly the same way, I just double checked. And on one of them 100% of the third-party content works, while on the other only about 40% of it does work.
Anyway, thanks to all for trying to help
Do both PCs always assign the same drive letter to the external?
Yes. On both it's F: , everytime. It's the only drive I connect
Where did you set this?
Try this.
First, in Content directory manager, setup a copy of the current directories on the 'working' computer.
Right click on Content library tab, select Content Directory Manager, highlight the Current Directories, and click the Copy button, then accept.
This will give a transferrable copy of the directory listing in the ContentDirectoryManager.dsx file.
If the drive letters are the same on both computers, copy the file ContentDirectoryManager.Dsx from c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\daz 3d\Sutdio 4, from the computer it's working on and put it in the equivalent location on the secondary computer.
Once this is transferred over, on the second computer, then select the copied directory in CDM, click the radio button to the side of the copy set and click accept, to make the directories active.
This will make the mapped directories exactly the same between the two computers.
Can you manually access the files using the problematic machine - using Windows/File Explorer rather than DAZ Studio? Try accessing one of the files that won't load properly. It may be a matter of different Windows users/security settings/file permissions on the two machines.
It was just that. Freaking HP Sure Click!! I don't know how I didn't think of that invasive program, I feel dumb now
. I removed it and now everything works properly. Thank you SixDs and thankyou all that tried to help!