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But, do you know of any program or utility that would globally change something like :

:Runtime:Geometries:*:

to :

C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeGeometries*

I would not to recommend to change it that way, but rather the other way around:
to :Runtime:Geometries:
because you already point to your Poser runtime in the Carrara browser. And what would you do if you don't work with Poser 7 anymore? Change everything to Poser 9 or whatever it is then in a few years when Poser 7 is just outdated? The Runtime will still exist.

By the way if you work with DAZ Studio it has no problems to find files that start with :Runtime:Geometries: neither have Vue or Max a problem with that because they all use a path that is locating to your Poser runtime.

The problem with difficult *.cr files is not on the side of your Poser application in most cases it's the software by vendors that doesn't point to Poser 7 or Poser Pro or :Runtime:Geometries but to such fantasy paths as D:Mydocuments:Vendorname:Poserstuff etc This is why Poser also often has a problem with it and likes to choke while searching for it. But on a vendor forum like this one it may be not the answer one wants to hear. :-)