Managed to break Poser

[Hornet3d]

Having been distracted by other projects for a while but I decided to return to Poser after a couple of weeks of non use, problem was I had not realised that the drive holding all my Poser content had become unplugged. Poser tried to launch but obviously could not find any content so I stopped the program and reconnected the drive however, while Poser will launch it immediately locks up. Task manager shows there are 5 threads running but never seem to stop. I tried changing the preference files but had the same problem. I uninstalled Poser and reinstalled Poser 11.3 which then asked me for my serial number when launched, this it accepted and Poser loaded with the default screen but still the program locks up.

Not sure why I have reached this point but does anyone have any ideas how to get back to a working Poser installation?

 

[estherau]

That's horrible. i've never had that problem, thank goodness. Well i'm sure you have, but i'll ask -have you restarted you computer?

 

[kersbergen]

Not that I can help you and glad it did not happen to me, I would be devastaded when it happened.
but a few weeks ago I tried to inslall DSON and it did not work. now even after reïnstalling Poser 11.3 constant opens with a failure message about DSON.

 

[RobZhena]

Pardon me if this is too obvious, but did you restart the computer to end any activity?

 

[Hornet3d]

Pardon me if this is too obvious, but did you restart the computer to end any activity?

Yep, thanks for the suggestion though. There were three more restarts as I did each reinstall. Before the second install I deleted the old installation and along with every Poser related file I could find. When that did not work I uninstalled it again with geek uninstaller and before trying again. All of this had no impact on the problem. Finally I uninstalled for the last time and then restored the cloud backup I had of the Poser folder in programs and also all of the app data.

That did the trick and Poser not only launched but went straight back to my prefered screen with all my runtime links intact. The only problem I now have is Poser trying to find files that should have nothing to do with my default scene but at least I have a running installation so hopefully I can sort the small issues in the coming days.

 

[KageRyu]

One thing it might be is a drive letter conflict. Sometimes when you disconnect/reconnect USB drives the OS changes the letter assignment... and if Poser still has references to the old runtimes in the library Prefs.xml it may be causing Poser to "Appear" to lock up while it searches for the non-existent drive. One way to remedy this would be to delete the Library Prefs.xml manually, an alternate way would be to verify the drive assignment in the XML by editing it and either changing these to match the new drive letter assignment or using Disk Management to reassign the drive this letter.
WARNING - On Some Installations of Windows 7+ once you edit the XML file Poser no longer likes it. I am unsure why this is. On one of my machines running 7 I edited the Queue Manager files by hand to reset dropped frames all the time, on a different machine I tried it once and on the next boot of Queue Manager it ignored the job list and generated a new one.
WARNING 2- Sometimes Poser will hang and freeze and otherwise appear to be unresponsive for ridiculously long periods of times when looking for missing files, content, and especially Runtimes. Sure you can force it to close, but this may damage Prefs, INI files, and other internals. Sometimes it is best to walk away and return and see if it has started responding. When I say Ridiculous I do mean Ridiculous though...the record on one of my Machines was over 90 minutes.

 

[KageRyu]

Oh... it's fixed, that's good.... I was too late.

 

[Hornet3d]

One thing it might be is a drive letter conflict. Sometimes when you disconnect/reconnect USB drives the OS changes the letter assignment... and if Poser still has references to the old runtimes in the library Prefs.xml it may be causing Poser to "Appear" to lock up while it searches for the non-existent drive. One way to remedy this would be to delete the Library Prefs.xml manually, an alternate way would be to verify the drive assignment in the XML by editing it and either changing these to match the new drive letter assignment or using Disk Management to reassign the drive this letter.
WARNING - On Some Installations of Windows 7+ once you edit the XML file Poser no longer likes it. I am unsure why this is. On one of my machines running 7 I edited the Queue Manager files by hand to reset dropped frames all the time, on a different machine I tried it once and on the next boot of Queue Manager it ignored the job list and generated a new one.
WARNING 2- Sometimes Poser will hang and freeze and otherwise appear to be unresponsive for ridiculously long periods of times when looking for missing files, content, and especially Runtimes. Sure you can force it to close, but this may damage Prefs, INI files, and other internals. Sometimes it is best to walk away and return and see if it has started responding. When I say Ridiculous I do mean Ridiculous though...the record on one of my Machines was over 90 minutes.

Oh... it's fixed, that's good.... I was too late.

Thank you for taking the time to give suggestions on fixing my problem, I should have given a little more detail but I clearly did not have my brain in gear yesterday. I am running Poser on Windows 10 not really by choice but I had a computer built for me about eighteen months ago and Windows 10 was the only option. I agree with you that it might have been looking for missing files but I left it running when I went off to do some work and when I returned to the computer some seven hours later it was still working in short bursts, for example I could get the drop down menu on on the windows in an attempt to change it from docked to floating but you could not actually select any option. The task manager showed it was running five threads but Poser itself looked lifeless.

The drive letter for my runtimes remained the same throughout but Poser seemed to be having problems even after a new install as it would often show the three libraries of Poser 11, Downloads and Purchased with question marks against them and I never had it responsive long enough to add other libraries.

I finally uninstalled Poser and decided to leave it until someone came back with some suggestions and was not looking forward to having to rebuild my preferences once I had it running. It was only then it occured to me that there was something else that might work. I have the C drive automatically backed up to the cloud and fortunately it had run a backup just twenty four hours earlier. I was therefore able to restore the Poser 11 into the programs folder and also restore the Program Data and App Data files. I breathed a sigh of relief when Poser launched with all my old settings but then it started asking for files that had nothing to do with my saved scene but finally it settled down. With it now working I was able to collect the scene inventory which showed what files were missing allowing me to restore those files as well. I guess it took about three hours to do the restore but it worked and it is nice to know my backup system works.

Thank you again for taking the trouble to help sort my problem, I still run a version of Poser on Windows 7 so I am always interested on possible fixes and how Poser reacts to changes.

 

[Aylaaenas_Evenwing]

Not that I can help you and glad it did not happen to me, I would be devastaded when it happened.
but a few weeks ago I tried to inslall DSON and it did not work. now even after reïnstalling Poser 11.3 constant opens with a failure message about DSON.

That's probably a python issue, dson is not updated I believe.