Finally tired of all the useless files and folders and scrolling through a couple dozen folders that I don't use, and such, I made the hard decision to dump poser and start all over again. This time rather than load my backup folders, I am starting fresh from the start. That way I won't load stuff that I don't use anymore. The Poser folder, had eat most of my hard drive, about 68% of the drive, most those folders were stuff, that I didn't even use anymore!

I was thinking of doing the same thing.. But all those files!!!!!!!1 My aching head

What is you fix for the problem?

Maybe Daz or somebody will come up with something like "FolderCleaner", analogous to Dialcleaner, where it goes thru and automatically deletes unused files somehow.

My solution, though maybe not the most effective, has been to tackle one folder at a time. For instance, this morning was spent going through my props, deleting ones I never use (and the ones that looked MUCH better in the thumbnail before d'loading!) and combining others into new folders. I managed to get rid of over a dozen folders that previously held only one or two props!

The big headache for me has always been the Texture and Geomtries folders. It is really really hard to clean those out and not mess up something you want to keep. Which is why over the years, I found it easier to dump poser and start over. This is the first time though I am going to start fresh and not use my back up files...

Yeah, I know what you mean.... move one goemetry or texture and Poser throws a hissy! Those two folders don't get delved into very often though, so I normally let things stay where they lay.

Yeah me too, which is why Poser will slowly eat your harddrive. Those are the two biggest folders and you will be surprised at all the junk that ends up in those folders.

Another thing, are all p4 files and Vicki 1 and Mike 1 files that are getting all dusty - Actually I am thinking of going even more radical - Just buying a new computer and starting all over again - which is the same thing only more money :( Of course I need to save up the money first :) Dee-Marie

Shoot, I do that all the time! I like working from a clean install, and loading in just what I'm likely to use. I also save my old Runtimes, tho....probably worst of both worlds.

Has anyone come up with a utility that will find Geometries & Textures that don't match poser files? This would be a huge benefit in cleaning... More than once, I've deleted a prop or figure using the " - " button at the bottom of the library, then realized I needed to open the pp2, pz2, cr2, etc. to find out where the textures and/or geometries were filed. So there are probably tons of orphaned folders on my drive that aren't used because I don't have a clue where to look for them!

If you want to clean your Geometrie folder, you can try what I do; although it will take a while. I zip each folder and then delete the files. As I go to a prop or character, clothing, etc., Posr will ask for the obj. file. I open the zipped file and extract only what is needed for the file. This way if I don't use a file any longer, or not very often, the file takes up much less space, and you may be surprised the number of files your hard drive won't have to scan simply because they aren't showing in the directory. I do this for most of my Librarie files also. If I need a file for clothing or a character, once I have created the character I then delete the files until the next time. Remember, use the directories seldom used. I wouldn't imagine someone wanting to keep their directory zipped that contains V3 or other files used almost daily. Try this; I have gained several GB of space, of course there are many less files to worry about. If after a few weeks or months, If I haven't used the file or directory, I put it on a CD. Dutchman.

I'm ready to dump Poser COMPLETELY! It's the slowest 3d app I own, can't even make use of OpenGL, nor can I load more than one good figure at a time into it. Scenes with V2 and Mikey? Forget it! I've got over 1gig of ram, and a 1ghz CPU pushing this clunky 1998 program around... If I could use my figures in LW without re-boning them, I'd just do that. Only reason I even keep P4 on my system anyway.

Forget it! I've got over 1gig of ram Then the problem ain't the program, bud, but the processor in your computer.

I am doing even as I write... involuntarily. My hard drive crashed... brand new 160GB I bought on Black Friday... I lost all my data too... which sucks big time!

I got a DVD Burner and plan on making an image of Poser 4 once I have all the content loaded so that this doesn't happen again. I would suggestion the same thing. Load your main content... V2/M2 V3/M3... whatever... and then backup your poser directory.

I feel for ya, Butch. I just installed a second (biger) hard drive devoted solely to Poser 5 and unzipped every darn Poser thing I've picked up into it. Took me a week! It's soooooo nice tho to have everything available in a couple clicks instead of looking for stuff on 40 CD's Good luck!!

Can't wait to get a dvd burner...that 100CD pile will be only 25 or so DVDs Actually, an external HD isn't too bad a price anymore...or there is a box you can buy and install a regular hard drive...actually a coupl eof them as needed....that may be a good choice for backup. etc

i was just grincjing to myself about how slow poser is and all the crap ive accumulated...oy...and apparently no one has figured a good way to clean the folders out..lol..too bad we cant just rt click the file and delete it...

Would it be all that difficult to have a program that monitors what you install...creates an entry for it...then later, if you want to delete, you just go to that entry..hit dlete, and all the associated stuff is pulled out of where it was installed... sounds like something we already have :)...not in Poser though...

What I did will save a ton of space. 1st thing was dumped all my .bum files. They are huge. Only do this if you have ProPack or Poser 5. When a figure can't find a .bum file I use the skin texture as a bump map and it works just fine from what I've seen. 2nd thing is I used the python script to compress the runtime. This alone will save a ton of space. Keep in mind that if you need to hack a .cr2 later on you will need to resave the figure to your library with file compression turned off in your prefs. Cheers, Joe

EUREKA...up above it ws stated that a complete install of Poser was to be done...but that really isn't necessary, is it ??? Can't you just dump the runtime...and any other files that were put in the Poser directory????? Then its all clean, and you can surely start over fresh.

if you dump the Runtime then how will you get the neccessary files back if you don't do another install?

actually i think i found a few in the store..theres Equilibrium PBoost 1.4.2.19:LIbrary Manager and file tools The Uninstaller Poser Product Manager those are the ones i came across...

:(..dumping..yeah...unless you don't use any of the stock/default Poser stuff... and I rarely use any of it. Does PBoost keep track of what and where stuff is installed ???

i havent use any of them..was hoping someone that hs might give some practical knowledge..it looks like you can create folders and keep from having to scroll through a thousand things to find what you want... they look useful...not really expensive either...tho im not sure if some of them have to be installed before you install everything else or if installing them after will work too... anyone anyone?

What I hate along this topic is finding some great prop, texture or whatnot that you might only use for one or two projects...but once you leave it in your folders for awhile it gets lost in the clutter. What I have started doing is using an install monitor [I use Norton Cleansweep] and monitor each installation. That allows me to then get rid of all instances and parts of a file or only remove what I want, without a manual search.

i think thats what some of those programs do...i forget which one, i think Equlibrium, but it keeps track of the installations ..i dunno..gues we'll have to check them out...:)

However, thos various "unistallers" get confused easily. I had a prgram installed on a secondary drive. A large program. ON that same drive I have tons of downloads. The unistaller proceeded to unistall the program along with every single download in a complete sperate folder and they weren't even Poser stuff. For the problem that you all speak of, I would imagine that is why in Poser 5 you have a Downloads/Runtime/ in addition to the regular Poser 5/Runtime. So that you may direct your files to Downloads/Runtime, test them out and then just delete the offending files manually if you so choose. Then move every thing to the regular runtime filder that you want to keep. But I too would prefer the idea mentioned just right clicking on a menu item and have it delete all things associated with it. PeteJ

which 'uninstallers' are you talking about? the ones in the store designed especially for Poser or the ones like Cleansweep that arent necessarily supposed to do what we want them to? (uninstall just a model or clothing..etc)

The uninstallers in the store for poser work just fine. I only have a 6Gb hard drive, most of which is software, so I needed this to make Poser an option for me. The only problem is that it doesn't delete folders - so there is still some scrolling to do in poses but that's easily cleared up every couple of weeks. I now have everything in zip folders (including the DAZ products) on CDs and install/uninstall as required. You can even install products whilst working within Poser - so you don't have to have thought of everything before you start!

If you have Poser 5 then you can set up a Runtime folder of things you hardly use (or themed like Christmas stuff) and then burn the Runtime to CD. You can link it happily to Poser 5 for when you need it.

Bah! Finding unused geometry files and texture files... a few lines of scripting in a unix-environment and in Windows ppl need "programs" to do those things. I suggest that whoever is really interested in cleaning up geometries and textures -folders from unused stuff, download yourselves some Windows-ported basic unix -tools and learn how to use them. This would be mainly grep-and diff -programs, with which these things can be done quickly and with no hassle. Might be "too involved" approach to those not familiar with anything that sounds like "unix" or "linux" and who don't know how to invoke a command line from Windows. one free Grep fro Windows: http://www.wingrep.com/download.html how to use: read read-me's :) Poser 4 use: 1) use grep to extract all references to the "Geometries" -folder and save the geometry path to a file. 2) use the just saved file as a source for grep and use it to match geometry files to those extracted from character- folders (or props or whatever). save the results to a file. 3) grep all geometry files and save their names to another file. 4) use diff to find what are the differencies between those two saved files in 2 and 3 --> delete the ones not in common (since every referenced geometry file should be in both saved files). Complicated? Not at all once you get the hang of it. This is just a quick'n'dirty approach for those dedicated to get the job done.

Some earlier posts in this thread waxed ruefully about problems with file references which can arise when you move geometry or texture files to a new folder. I don't know what one could do about geometry files, but a great utility I found a year or so ago is CorrectReference1.1 by HogSoft (free license for single user). I organized all my textures into folders and subfolders (e.g., textures:hair textures:kozaburo) and similarly reorganized my figures and props. I then ran CorrectReference, which searched through my runtime folders (you can do just a subset of folders if you want) and corrected all the texture file references within the figure and prop files. It also listed the figures and props for which the referenced texture(s) could not be found, which made it easy to either manually repair or just kill the figure or prop if it was one I no longer used. I still probably have way too many geometry files and other vestigial stuff, but textures aren't a big hassle for me anymore.

I just checked and CorrectReference is still available here in free stuff (uploaded Sep 20, 2002).

It is not the location of the files, file structure that got me. It was and is the just sheer size of the files. As poser textures get more and more realistic, the size of the files get really huge! It doesn't take that many to really start to make a dent in your harddrive. The same goes for the geometry folder as well. As the figures get more complex, the bigger the folder. Nor does it help that everyone doesn't use the same zip format for stuff. A result is that you have bits and pieces of stuff floating around in your Poser Main folder and bits and pieces in different folders too. I don't think that there is an easy solution to this. Over the years, I found that dumping poser and reloading works for me, this is the first time that I haven't used backup folders to reload poser though. So far it is going great. Until a new version of poser or an update handles files better or someone finds a way to make the actual files smaller, Poser is going to continue to eat harddrives, CD's and now DVD's like crazy....

Eventually I decided to stop tryign to beat Poser into shap and "went with the flow". 1) I bought a 100gig drive for poser stuff. The other day I saw a 200gig drive @ CompUSA for 99$ after rebates so this shoudln't be a huge problem for anyone anymore. 2) Using Poser5 made it easy to simply make a seperate runtime by supplier. I have a seperate runtime for Daz/Renderosity/Poserpros/Poserstyle and so on. When I install something I got fromt hem, I jsut put it int he right place. 3) Get on with my life :)

(LOL!) soulhuntre! Your mention of 200 gigs being enough to make our Poser files not a huge problem just made me snort orange juice! I just got a sudden memory of "way back in the day" when there were tape drives, then 12 & 8" floppies, and someone saying to me, "What's the point of getting a 128? You'll never use more than 100 meg!" And now we're saying the same thing about 200 GIG! (LOL) I think I just dated myself... Let's all sing along: "Atari, Amiga, Commodor(64) oh my!"

What about the Sinclar that had a whopping 2k of memory? I still have one of those packed up somewhere

"which 'uninstallers' are you talking about? the ones in the store designed especially for Poser or the ones like Cleansweep that arent necessarily supposed to do what we want them to? (uninstall just a model or clothing..etc) " So sorry, I was refering to Norton Systemworks. Similarly it happened with "Unistaller" PeteJ

7SeAs' Poser Product Manager is the one I use (about $15)- it installs product files from runtime folders in zip files (which is how most MP products are supplied) and adds them to a list of installed products. You can then just select them to uninstall! It does leave the odd png behind but the benifit is enough to overlook this.

Attached Link: http://nirsoft.mirrorz.com/

NOw you know that link is gonna be pulled. LOL

Anyone notice that poser slows down your hard drive out of the box with the amount of files it has by default?

Oh ghod I'm so sorry about that link! ] Mods! Please delete the link from my previous post if you can. CWShredder has just removed a 'cws affiliate winshow' cws virus from my IE system... so hopefully this post will make it through clean. Looks like I have to remove java from my system to stop this from happenning again. In case mods delete my post, here it is again: ***************************** It's a bit late to jump into this thread, but WTF... CorrectReference Professional is entering the later stages of beta-testing... ...and it has a feature to enable you to identify files within your textures/geometries which are not used by any library files. Could be just the ticket!! Howard:)) *****************************

OK... I delted the post myself... didn't know I could do that!!! H:))