I have P7  on an external hard drive but the program is not installed on the computers that I use. P7 generally works fine except that it cannot open .pz3s. When windows asks what program needs to open the file it does not list P7 as one of the options........fair enough. But then when I go to the location of P7 on the external drive and click on it then windows will not select it. I have solved this problem before but I don't t remember how. Any ideas?

You should be able to right click on a .pz3 file and click "Open with...". In the dialogue that comes up, you select the Poser.exe file on your external drive, and there should be an option to "Always open with this program..".

Or you can do it by going into your Folder options, File types, and specify there which program to use to open .pz3 files.

It may be that your registry is not recognizing the external drive.  I also run poser on a separate drive, but it is one attached to my home network.  

This may sound crazy, but this is how I got my Poser to play nice with my lap top and my tower.  I ran the install program on both machines separately, telling it to load onto my "X" drive (the external).   This sets up the registry files to know where I want it to look for the program.     

I ran the setup on the second machine telling it to land in the same place (yes it over wrote the first installation on the external drive,  but since I hadn't used it yet, there was nothing to be lost, and it was transparent to the first machine.)   

This way, I have all the registry files where they belong on either machine, and the program and runtimes look to the external.    The only problem I have is if the external drive gets turned off.  

I hope this wasn't confusing.

To IsaoShi: The method you have suggested was what I was trying to use; however windows did not give me any option for opening with poser.

To Fylbrigge: I finally installed P7 SR3 over the top of the one I had copied to the external drive, then it was able to "see" P7 as an option for opening the pz3 files. I also installed P7 to the main computer drive. I had hoped that I could have all my poser stuff on my wallet sized, USB powered 500GB external and easily move it from one computer to another without installing P7 on each computer but that may not be possible.Thanks for your help!
Lance

Poser 7 has very few dependent files stored outside its own app folder. Those that are stored 'somewhere else' - depends on which OS you have - are .ini and preference files. I'd recommend copying these from:

C:Documents and Settings[your name]Application DataPoser 7 (Windows XP) or
C:Users[your name]AppDataRoamingPoser 7 (Vista)

and keeping them in a folder (outside the Poser 7 folder and any external Runtime folders) on your portable drive so that you can copy them into the correct location on each machine you use Poser on. That way you're always using the same prefs, but you'll have to manually ensure that everything is kept in sync.

As you've only been through the install routine on one machine, the others won't know that .pz3 files open with Poser. This doesn't matter if you use File>Open... from within Poser. If you really want the file association to be made, proceed as follows:

Right click on a .pz3 file and 'Open with...'   You will not see Poser listed because there's no registry entry for it. But you can browse to the Poser.exe file on your portable drive and elect to 'Always use this program to open this type of file'. The precise details vary depending on OS. If in doubt, read the Windows help file... search for 'file type association'.

Additionally, I'd make sure that your portable drive is assigned the same drive letter on all your PCs. Make it something from the middle or the end of the alphabet so that DVD drives, USB sticks and all the other things you can plug in don't grab the letter. In my experience anything up to H: should be avoided.

Thanks cspear, that is very helpful! I'm always amazed at how much I can learn from questions on these forums.     Lance