I did want to complete this post, just in case someone else searched and located it.  I tried all the above suggestions, de-installed and re-installed numerous times.  On my Windows 7 machine, I could never get it to not crash after adding basic child or basic female or basic male, even though the genesis character would install.

I always installed Poser 9, followed by SR3.1, followed by the DSON importer to the runtime directory.  I tried installing the two Genesis packages to the runtime, into the default My Documents and other areas.

I then tried it on my home machine with Vista - same problem.  Sigh...

I then tried it on my second work machine, Windows XP.

In all cases, I get crash to the desktop whenever I add in the basic characters, except for Genesis.  When I add in things like hair or clothes, I get error messages, but the actual item does render in the screen. 

AttributeError: SetGamma Traceback (most recent call last):   File "C:Usersdenjones.TURNERDocumentsGenesis EssentialsRuntimelibrariesCharacterDAZ HairAldoraAldora Hair.py", line 2, in     dson.dzdsonimporter.loadCompanionDSONFile( sys.argv[0] ); SystemError: NULL result without error in PyObject_Call

I can see files being created in the data directories for these items.  However, adding in any of the basic characters crashes for all environments.

I will just have to wait and see if future versions of the DSON import might work.