Here's my experience:
Some months ago, I installed Poser 8 on an external hard drive (USB removable) while in a Windows XP sp3 32-bit environment, desktop machine.

Poser 8 is also launchable directly from the executable inside the Poser 8 folder, if I use that external drive with my other win xp sp3 machine (notebook).

Today, I attached the same external drive to my new Windows 7 32-bit machine.  I attempted to launch Poser 8 directly from executable inside the Poser 8 folder on the external drive.

An error message popped up.  Apparently, this is a Side-By-Side error.  What's that ?!  Good grief...

I get this response from the system, when I opened the Event Viewer:
*Activation context generation failed for "H:Poser 8Poser.exe". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.ATL,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found.

• Anyone here had the same experience ?
  I may have to re-install.. ??*

**

That won't work - you need to re-install.
Poser needs to be configured for the new machine and it needs to install support files such as the VisualC libraries.
Reinstalling Poser at the same location (on the external drive) will make it work again.

You could alternatively install Poser at the local drive and attach the "old" runtime as an external runtime.

uhmmm ...
So it appears that the Microsoft Visual C++ installation is missing from my new windows 7 32-bit machine.

Right-O !  No joy of using Poser 8, until I get this sorted !  Grrrrr.

Thanks for the reply.

What is the problem with installing Poser on your new machine? The installer will take care of the VisualC runtime installation.

yup - that'll do it.  I have an update going on now, so I should be able to get on with things soon.

What I did was re-install poser on the external drive for each computer I wanted to use it on. I just installed over the same location on the external drive. This way it setup all the support files that were needed on each computer. Previous versions of Poser only required you to register it on each computer.

I only use two computers with it. Mostly my laptop. But if I run into something that won't render on the laptop. I just move to my desktop to render. Have not had any problems this way. I also setup a seperate directory for all my poser content.  That way if I install another version of Poser or another application that can use the same files. I don't have to re-install the content again.

ensuring you have the correct Visual C++ runtime libraries installed on the computer will allow you to run Poser 8 without re-installing.

I have re-installed windows onto my computer 5 times since I got Poser 8, but I have only actually INSTALLED it once. the first time onto a secondary drive.

OK.

I found a Smith Micro Knowledge Base item which may be referring to a cause of my trouble:
Poser 8 Configuration Error on Start Up

A link in that article takes me to
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
so that's supposed to be my missing item.  Upon checking in my Control Panel | Programs and Features listing, I can confirm that I do not have this installed on my new Win 7 32-bit (x86) machine.

Since I'm anticipating on buying a new laptop in the foreseeable future, and because that machine is extremely likely to be a Win7laptop (waaaaa I'm used to and would rather have XP), I've downloaded to my external drive the Microsoft Visual C link you posted. Thank you very much! I have been seeing people having difficulties with installing Poser 8 on a Win7 machine and figured that I would just run Poser 8 from my external drive.

YES !!  It works again !!!

Hoh hoh hoh ! 

It was the missing Visual Studio C++ item that my Poser 8 on external HDD needed.

Used my official serial number from Smith Micro to register the app, and then it loads and runs as normal.   Yah-hoooo !

Congrats.
Just be careful. I've encountered programs that require C++2005 and installing that version to run the other programs has over-written some stuff installed by the C++2008 messing up those dependencies.

Noted, thanks.

I had 2005 C++ installed originally.  Gulp.

Oh well, I'll take things one step at a time.

had the exact same error with the mission editor on a game called Dragon Rising. same fix

Am I hearing this right?  You can install Poser 8 on an external HD and run it on multiple machines?

No no, heh heh !  

Just the one installation and run on one machine at one time.

I had an old windows xp sp3 machine which is now retired, and a new windows 7  machine now in use.