hey folks. i purchased 4 things today (3 characters, 1 prop set) and i can't for the life of me get this crap to install. i only have 1 curious labs folder, which contains only one poser program (p5). i try to unzip these dang things, it says "you've successfully unzipped ...." but it's nowhere to be found. the other day i bought something made by b-man, and it worked fine. i bought something by liteluvr and it worked fine. what the heck is going on with these? any specific help would rock. the FAQ is worthless, it just tells me unzip to the runtime folder. i've unzipped to that and also tried unzipping to everything in it. no good. frustration rules the day.

Be sure that the zip folder structure is correct. Burrow through the zip and see if the names match up with the names of your folders in your Poser folder. That will tell you two things. Number one, where to look for your files and number two, what heppened to them.

it seems like the names match up, but these things are nowhere in my runtime. i went through them in p5, then with my regular windows explorer. this is driving me nuts. there has to be a better program out there...

Search thru the whole P5 directory...sometimes files create there own runtime >:( or else they create another directory totally different..I've had things install directtly into the Curious Labs folder..the whole shootin match...even have if I have create sub folders checked.... I would do a search & see where it installed...if necessary search the whole main drive..weird things happen it's annoying as hell when things don't go where they are supposed to go.

That's why I always install or unzip in a subfolder of a "downloads" folder I created on my hard disk and then copy the files myself where I want them to go. If the folders are ok I copy the folders, if not, I copy only the files. That way, I always know where the files are going. In the beginning, it happened so often that I couldn't find the files, just like you. France

As Francemi states, you're better off to install your stuff into a Temporary folder at first. For instance, let's say we have a coat for Michael. We can create a folder called "Mike's Coat," then install the item into that folder. Then look at the contents, and see if the folders line up with the folder structure of Poser. See if you want to change the names of any folders. Look at the attached screenshot. This shows Poser 5's folders, which are pretty similar to Poser 4's folder structure.

FWIW, if you are running Windows XP you can right click on the Zip file and then use the Explore funtion to look at the structure. If it doesn't match, copy and paste manually. Do not cut and paste or you'll lose the contents of the zip.

I do the unzip onto drive "C", then I do the drag and drop to be on the safe side. After that, I do delete the empty folder. I never extract to the folder you think it is going to go. I did that in the past, and found problems.

I've had instances where drag and drop doesn't work - weird - but occasionally it happens so try copy/paste as well.

You can get a good idea of how messed up these installation can sometimes be if you look at your Poser folder in your file manager. I've seen several runtimes, and repeats of Libraries. One classic example is Stephanie's trick shooting poses. The author thought the Pose folder is named "PoseS." So I could never find the Poses once they were installed. I fail to understand why it's so hard to get this stuff right.

wow. thanks for all the help folks! i just kept tying, then one at a time they worked. i was at it until midnight it seems. anyhow, 3 out of 4 are working. i appreciate all the guidance! but my manual is back in texas, so... i'm about to do another topic! :) ren

I don't know about P5, I only have P4, but when this has happened to me, I came to find out that the zip contained an incorrect path, in that rather than starting with Runtime, it started with a folder named for the figure, then Runtime second. When this happens, it dumps a folder into Runtime, rather than distributing the elements of the zip into the correct places. Check your Runtime folder to see if a new folder has been installed containing the files. Melanie

P5 has the same path as P4 but what you discribed happens when people do not zip up their product/freestuff in a folder called Runtime and rename it after it's zipped but put this Runtime into another folder named like their product and zip this up.

I've had to rezip several downloads that were zipped incorrectly. I have a Runtime folder on my C drive just for that purpose. It would be nice if the folks who offer these could zip it in a Runtime folder. I think they just don't know better. It's easier for them to save the files in a folder with the object name, but they forget that the zip path starts with the folder it's saved in. Melanie

I can sort of see the point of putting it into it's own folder, for organizational sake of not only the creator, but the end-user. In XP at least, all you have to do is burrow a level or two and copy/paste the Runtime folder. However, it is kind of redundant to have the .zip named after the file (which it SHOULD be) and have a folder with the name also above the Runtime.

I've been totally amazed at how even the "experts," or "Big Name" companies get it wrong. After spending considerable time fixing the messes, I made the decision to start over from scratch and install everything into a temporary folder before repackaging and installing into Poser. You may never be able to educate the artists into how its done, but you can get it right on your own computer.