well, i can understand not taking it for granted that the base update is necessary. if it's not necessary for S4, exactly what was it necesary for? and several people have reported not being able to use S4 until they updated V4 base first.  so it's necessary at least part of the time, and i can't see (so far) why that would ever be true.

the issue, to me, is that DAZ didn't say what they updated, didn't say why it was necessary, include obscure steps in installation, and have generally made the whole process of updating more complex than what seems to be necessary.   if "initialization" is recommended, then why is it optional? if almost no one knows what exactly what it does, how can they make a decision about it?   why would initializing 4 times make a difference?  what stopped it from working the other 3 times? 

lots of people are experiencing lots of different bugs and highly variable problems with installation.  and looking, i'm not finding any information about how these installers actually work and why.

i see what you're saying about the saved cr2, but at the same time i don't see how that has anything to do with anything i mentioned doing.  why would i duplicate an empty V4 base?  i know what morph injections do, including noting that some of the ones i own load remote data and some include the data within themselves.  the self-contained option seems neat to me because it bypasses the runtime issue. 

i said _additional_because i meant channels additional to the cr2.  any saved cr2 wouldn't have any slots for new add-ons.

i know Poser search happens silently, but you know, i'm not even getting a response like it's searching.  i'd say the load time is about the same or shorter than when i had the files in the main runtime.  and i have absolutely no clue why it treated Posermatic's files differently.  oh, i know!  there's a Posermatic folder in the main runtime, because that's where i keep my Poser-owner figures and supporting files.  i have Miki 1 and some Posermatic morphs for her.  and it reacted pretty immediately to not finding them.  so i bet it's encountering that folder, not finding the files, and asking about it. so it might not be doing much silent searching.  it seems to look in the specified place but in more than one runtime.  i can't even be sure it looks beyond the main and active runtimes.  it's definitely not searching in general, or it would have found those files without asking me.

actually, they're not in multiple places.  they're only in my version 4 runtime.  i'm pretty clear on where all my files are and (mostly) what they're doing.

problems with installing add-ons to V4 are so common that i thought (and still think) it might be a good idea to share information about what the installers are doing and how the add-ons work.  that said, i really, really don't need you to keep talking about how injections work.  as i've said a few times, i already understand that.  it's completely obvious how all of the channels work, and where and how they're referencing other files.  unless you can explain what got updated in the V4 base installation since it wasn't the cr2 and doesn't seem to be any of the ExP files, you really don't need to keep trying to teach me what i already know.