Help with DIM: avoiding a reinstall
James_H
Posts: 1,046
in The Commons
OK, this morning DIM tells me I have to reinstall everything. Is there something I can do to point it to the relevant folders and get it to see sense, as this was not the case yesterday.
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Comments
Are you getting some kind of warning? If so what is it?
No warning: just coming up saying everything has to be installed, as if nothing was already there. I'll see if I can see something has changed in the settings.
Sounds as if the manifests folder setting was chnaged, or the folder on disc moved or emptied.
Yes, I don't know what has happened. For some reason it was pointing to disk I, but I don't have a disk i/I. When I pointed it to disk D, it does show some installation, but there's still 1700+ products to install. After my previuous reinstall, I had got this down to c 170, mainly G8F & Expressions, which meant I had reduced load time.
I did force the computer to sleep the day before.
Make sure all these are pointing to where your content (and the relevent folders) actually are. And make sure the CMS is running. Also, in the second image's tab (Installation), make sure it's pointing to your main Daz content folder under (Content Path Shortcuts). Double check to make sure the Label and Path are correct.
Just use Windows to change the drive letter your files are on to match the one DAZ Studio, DAZ Central, and DIM have already configured.
I would avoid doing this, especially if you have other non-Daz content on that same drive.
Is your content on an external drive? Mine is and sometimes my external driver gets disconnected. If I unplug it from the USB port and plug it back in, it shows everything. This happens to me pretty often so none of my content will show in DAZ Studio. I imagine it could also happen in DIM.
DIM has forgotten about me.
DIM suddenly stopped remembering my account. Do I add myself? If I do, will it remember what is already installed? Hesitant to experiment.
Well, I added my existing account as a new account. DIM does not recognize any of the old downloads. Windows just had an update. My default after a Windows update is to blame them for every bad file-related thing that heppens shortly thereafter.
You would have to look under the gear icon (upper right) and the Advanced menu to see if it's still pointing to all the correct folders.
Argh.
Thank you. No. No it is not pointing to all the correct folders. It does not recognize any of the downloads that have already been downloaded. I had created custom installation folders. It does not recognize any of those. I had installed Hexagon. It does not have the Hexagon as one of the applications.
Argh.
The account details and settings are in a .ini file in
%AppData%/daz 3d/installmanager/useraccounts/
See if you have a back up of a slightly older version of the file, in case it is damaged.
Is it wrong to be glad that I still don't have Windows 10? LOL
Hope you can get it all worked out.
What does the one have to do with the other? It's mor likely a disc error (which could affect any version) or soem over-zealous security software (probably likewise able to affect any Windows version). I've been using Windows 10 for a while now without such issues.
RE: Windows - Completely slander on my part. All my programs worked fine. Windows gave the Update flag, which I kept ignoring. I left my PC to run an errand and Windows had updated my computer while I was gone. Now DIM can't find my manifest file, or whatever. I don't know it was Windows. But, it is the only thing that I can confirm changed for the moment. And, it is the kind of thing that has been screwed up after Windows updates in the past - again, without me confirming that the true cause is Windows.
I have done disc searches for ini files. Found some for a few programs, including Daz postgrl, but nothing for Install Manager. So, I will just have to figure out what the least annoying response should be. On the one hand, everything is installed. And, I know which order has not been installed. Annoyance and pain no matter how I respond.
Argh.
In any case, thank you both for your helpful suggestions.
If Windows restarted it may not have allowed the file to finish updating on exit or the like, corrupting (or even deleting) it. Did you look in the exact path I gave? Just paste it into a file browser's addess bar and it will expand the %AppData% part into the correct path to get to the real folder.
Unfortunately, that just brings me to the new ini file without any record of what has been installed or my custom folders.
Yes, if the good file was still there then you wouldn't have had the issue - I was asking if you could roll the file back to an older, hopefully still good, version from a back up or system snap shot.
Aha. For whatever reason, I wasn't thinking of looking for a single file that way; had fooled myself that the big backup was for big crashes.
Will dive back in.
Thanks again.