Greenzkin Infiltration

NorthOf45 · April 2022

While working through some metadata complications, I came across a rather odd situation. I noticed a new CompatibilityBase for Genesis 8 Male, "Greenzkin Orc", which is doubly surprising since I do not own, nor have I ever installed, such a creature. There is a product by that name, but not in my library.

Note: The functionality of Genesis 8 Male does not appear to be affected by this little gremlin, so if you are skittish about messing around with your Content, or don't care, you can ignore it.

A further investigation found this wayward definition in several unrelated product metadata files, each from different vendors. I know that vendors do not supply the metadata, but they are from about the same release date, so I wonder if the same computer was used to produce the metadata, and a Greenzkin Orc was lurking in the scene and has infiltrated the database.

I removed the offending data from all the affected files, but the definition persisted, since there was nothing to actually remove (the source geometry does not exist). The usual tricks like uninstalling and deleting the products from the database, correcting the metadata files, re-installing the products, and reinstalling the Starter Essentials did not clear it.

What finally did work was to change the erroneous declaration to refer to some imaginary Compatibility Base (something that does not actually exist), then delete that base. No correction to the Products will clear this up, so a more invasive procedure is required.

Here is my fix:

Find the affected metadata files by searching for "greenzkin" in all .dsx files in the Runtime\Support folder. (Notepad++ - Find in Files works great, or a Windows Command prompt from the Runtime\Support folder with "FINDSTR /i greenzkin *.dsx")

If you have the Greenzkin Orc product, you can probably leave it out of consideration, unless that is where it started. Patient 0, as it were.

Change this line in any one metadata file that has it. You can do it directly in the Runtime\Support folder. (There might be more than one occurrence in the metadata file, so just delete the others)

to (I use Greenzkin Dummy in case you actually do have Greenzkin Orc):

Save and re-import the metadata for that product. This should clear the association with Genesis 8/Male and create a new Compatibility Base called "Greenzkin Dummy". Load something into a scene if you don't have anything yet, doesn't matter what, and select it. Right click the Scene tab -> Edit -> Scene Identification. Open the Compatibility Base selector (...) and look for "Greenzkin Dummy". Right-click on it and select Delete Compatibility Base. Cancel out so as to not change the base of the item in the scene. Done.

Now, if you never, ever expect to re-install any of the affected products, you can stop here. However, to prevent it from recurring, you need to remove those lines from all metadata files that have it, and insert them into the product archive to replace the original. You can re-import the metadata for each one after they have been corrected. Back up your originals in case you are afraid of making a mistake.

Affected Products in my library (there are surely more out there):

73769_Sten HD for Genesis 8 Male (2020-10-16)
74111_Louie for Genesis 8 Male (2020-10-21)
74165_Headless Horseman HD for Genesis 8 Male (2020-10-22)
78701_Skalde HD for Genesis 8 Male (2021-01-14)
80527_Pharaoh At War Characters and Outfit for Genesis 8 Male (2021-02-20)

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Greenzkin Infiltration

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