Hi LL, wondered how things were going.   Noticed you mentioned getting XL and something about not wanting to load everything into Poser 8.   Here's a screen capture of mine, I put red arrows to indicate how, when pressing the yellow magnifying glass icon, the box pops up that picks up all the runtimes....and I placed arrows indicating the various runtimes scattered around my drive.  I didn't do anything to get it to function this way, it just did it upon installation.   I don't know if the ShaderWorks thing helped the recognition of these runtimes, or if it would have done it anyway.   If you haven't tried the yellow magnifiying glass icon, give it a try....and if it does work, just pick a runtime, and then for example if you want a prop, click on Prop and hit the Search button at the bottom.   If you have large runtimes, give it a few seconds to populate.   So far so good for me.   I'm like you, I just want to enjoy the program I purchased...and even though you are much more advanced than I am, I think we share that common interest at least.   And considering I'm probably old enough to be mother to some of these guys....well....pictures speak a thousand words....haha.

~skylab   : )