Resolved - 4.6 / CMS probs

swee0051_129ccb1f26

I am livid! Even my DIM locked up on me now! I have had it! What does it take to get your software to run the way it used to on both of my home computers? It never gave me trouble before, but now it's bloody useless!

I have never had to enter passwords or run anything as admin on my own home desktop before (DS included). No one ever uses it but me. It is secure. It's almost never connected to the Internet, and this can't be blamed on changes in Windows because I've got a stable version that I haven't updated since before your latest rounds of "upgrades" that have made your software utterly useless! YES I'M ANGRY!

The only way I could get DS 4.6 to work on my Win7 machine was by persuading the OS security features that it was ok to allow CMS and DS to run together, as it had always been (never before needing me to fiddle with the firewall or UAC or anything else). Now, on my XP machine, the most STABLE computer I've ever owned (going back to 1983 here), for the first time ever I'm supposed to create passwords to run my own machine and to gain access to my own software? That's what I have to do to follow the advice I keep reading here that I need to run DS as admin. I can't run DS as admin unless I create and enter an admin password, which of course means now I have to use a password to switch on my own computer!

That's maddening enough after having run professional grade audio engineering software and peripherals without a hitch for several years without having to persuade my own computer that I really want it to work properly, but now DS won't even work at all!!!

I'm tired of people telling me I need to check and see if CMS is running when DS runs. NO IT'S NOT! And reinstalling it doesn't change that! The admins on this forum seem to offer simplistic, repetitive advice (that's not working for anyone) and then disappear when this problem comes up.

It took 5 re-installations and certain amount of security trickery to get this disaster of a software "upgrade" to function at all on my Win7 machine - like I had to hack into my own computer! After finally getting that to work (and thinking I had a handle on the problem), I tried to reinstall it on my 32 bit machine because 4.6 is supposed to be faster. But now my most stable and trustworthy computer EVER is completely baffled by whatever your engineers have done to it via your latest upgrade. After 3 completely unsuccessful re-installations on that machine, using all the tricks and gimmicks I've read about here - well how would you be feeling?

I want a legacy version of DS 4.5, 32 bit (NOT DS 4.5.1.56 either - that's where this nightmare began!), and I don't want to hear about your wonderful 4.6 release again until you've actually fixed it and verified it on a few operating systems besides Win8 and the latest Mac OS. I want my old software back, and I'm sick of spending days on end of extremely frustrating time trying to find a work-around for whatever you guys have done to DAZ Studio!

(I wish you guys would just consider a Linux version - it's not half the minefield of complexity and instability that Windows is. It's a simple, stable, and reliable OS without so much security paranoia built into it that it can no longer function.)

I have never seen so many complaints about similar problems on a "support" forum without any clear, solid fix being offered that actually works for most people, and it all has to do with your latest release and CMS not talking to each other.

So far I have dozens of hours over the past couple weeks invested in trying to get my software running the way it did before your "improvements" completely paralyzed it, and I've spent many hundreds of dollars on your site purchasing content that depends on your core program being able to run. I've been trying to be patient with DAZ throughout this colossal DS 4.6/CMS debacle, but I've had it!

If you can't fix this mess right now, would you please just make a few older versions available until you can fix it?

And a prominent apology wouldn't go amiss at some point. Even if your more experienced customers have found ways around this problem (and it's a shame that they seem to be the ones offering all the help in this forum rather than your own engineers who created this mess), those of us who are not software engineers in our spare time are often under the impression that when we pay for a product it should work out of the package or be replaced with one that does. Software should be no exception. (And yes, we all pay for DS when we buy extra content software from you.)

Please do the right thing DAZ! You've worked for years to built such a good reputation, and you've been a software company I've come to rely on for good product support. Don't do this to your customers!

Richard Haseltine

The only specific problems you mention are connection between CMS and DS on the XP machine, which may be down to the changed Valentina client being seen as a new application and so requiring firewall permission for internal communication (though that doesn't seem to have been true for most users so I'm far from certain there), and that the CMS isn't running alongside DS on Windows 7 (if it runs OK before you start DS and thens tops then that sounds like database corruption - try stopping the CMS, going to the folder with your database files. and deleting the .idx file; If that doesn't fix the issue you may need to reset the whole database).

I'm running on Windows 7 here, not running it as admin (though I am running with an administrator rather than regular user account, which isn't the same thing) so it certainly isn't case of requiring Windows 8, though I do allow Windows to update so there could be an issue relating to a fix you don't yet have.

swee0051_129ccb1f26

Richard Haseltine said:

The only specific problems you mention are connection between CMS and DS on the XP machine, which may be down to the changed Valentina client being seen as a new application and so requiring firewall permission for internal communication (though that doesn't seem to have been true for most users so I'm far from certain there), and that the CMS isn't running alongside DS on Windows 7 (if it runs OK before you start DS and thens tops then that sounds like database corruption - try stopping the CMS, going to the folder with your database files. and deleting the .idx file; If that doesn't fix the issue you may need to reset the whole database).

I'm running on Windows 7 here, not running it as admin (though I am running with an administrator rather than regular user account, which isn't the same thing) so it certainly isn't case of requiring Windows 8, though I do allow Windows to update so there could be an issue relating to a fix you don't yet have.

I don't know what a Valentina client is, and I haven't learned how to give permission in my WinXP firewall. (I didn't know WinXP had one, and it's certainly never come up in the 10+ years I've been using it and installing software in it on my personal computers and nearly as long on my computers at work.) If you can tell me what to do about it I'm all ears. So far my past few weeks of unwanted software schooling has all involved Win7, which is the reason for the explosion of frustration now that I'm going through it all over again with the XP machine.

My databases folder is completely empty on the XP machine, so there is no .idx file to delete. I have uninstalled CMS and then re-installed DS 4.5.1.56 and 4.6 a total of 3 times now (in addition to the 5 re-installations on my Win7 machine).

The only specific problem that I can mention is that CMS is not running. That's all I have. I've tried starting it by itself and it doesn't launch, regardless of whether I run as admin. It never shows up on Task Manager, not even right after I click on it, but it always asks me if I want to report the problem to Microsoft. It's just not running at all. I had no problems at all with my previous version, which I think was 4.5.0.114. (Was there a 4.5.0.112? That might have been it, though I've never used a beta release ever.)

The DS installation in my Win7 machine seems to be working well as of yesterday after learning about and disabling the UAC (which I'm told isn't supposed to do anything to help this issue), then rebooting, resetting the database (which actually did something), and re-importing the metadata (which also actually did something).

(Unfortunately, now that machine has major instability issues with the new Windows installation (began before I got DS working - no reason to think they're related), and it's not practical to use it with DS, hence the attempted upgrade to my XP machine while I trudge along with my Win7 OS problems.)

Dino Gramps

The CMS/Corrupt Database issue has been an annoyance for me also. I have had to rebuild my database twice with 4.5 on Windows7 64 OS for no apparent reason . I have upgraded to 4.6 successfully and am hoping for the best.

atticanne

sjhayes2 said:

The CMS/Corrupt Database issue has been an annoyance for me also. I have had to rebuild my database twice with 4.5 on Windows7 64 OS for no apparent reason . I have upgraded to 4.6 successfully and am hoping for the best.

If you use Categories, be sure to backup by running "Export User Data" at least monthly.

Richard Haseltine

The CMS is a service, not a regular process, but the Services tab of task Manager was introduced only in Vista. To check the state of a service in XP click the Start button, then Run..., then type services.msc in the text box and click OK (or Run - I can't recall the precise label).

swee0051_129ccb1f26

Richard Haseltine said:

The CMS is a service, not a regular process, but the Services tab of task Manager was introduced only in Vista. To check the state of a service in XP click the Start button, then Run..., then type services.msc in the text box and click OK (or Run - I can't recall the precise label).

Following those instructions, I see that DAZ CMS is running as a service the whole time.

I open DS (and each time now it automatically loads a blank Genesis figure, which it never did before installing 4.6), but my Smart Content pane is still blank, as are categories & products, and searching is still not working. At this point, I can reset the database, but I can't honestly tell if anything's happening. Then when I re-import the metada, it seems to find and list a great deal of my content (can't tell if it's all of it), but it just scrolls through that list without adding any of it to the Smart Contents pane or the Content Library Categories or Products.

I misspoke earlier about one item. On my Win7 machine, I had used all default directories, but on this WinXP machine, I have always customized my directories, as my C: drive is very small (only 40 gig - system use only), and I have a 2nd larger internal hard drive (E: drive) for such things:

- DS 4.6 is installed to E:\DAZ 3d\Studio 4.5\Program\
- DIM is installed in C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZ3DIM1\
- my content is downloaded by DIM to E:\DAZ 3d\Downloads\DIM DL\
- my content is installed by DIM to E:\DAZ 3d\Studio\My Library\

The installation(s) for CMS seem far more complicated. ContentManagementServer.exe itself is installed to C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Content Management Service\, but there is no directory called \databases\ there. On the 1st of my most recent re-installations, I left CMS alone. On the 2nd of my three most recent installations, after uninstalling CMS, I tried to install CMS and my databases on my E: drive in the E:\DAZ 3d\Content Management Service & E:\DAZ 3d\Content Management Service\databases directories, but on my most recent installation, after first uninstalling CMS, I think I just used the default values on the C: drive. The two directories (CMS & CMS databases) on the E: drive are simply empty. (Perhaps the uninstaller for CMS has not been entirely cleaning up after itself?) Needless to say, none of these installations worked.

There is also another DIM directory at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\
(in addition to the one installed in the C:\Program Files directory). This "All Users" directory has several subdirectories (Downloads, Filters, Invalid Products, ManifestFiles, & Settings) and three files (Hlog.txt, InstallList.ini, & Log.txt), but not the program itself, and no installed content. This "All Users" Downloads directory contains my older downloads (but not installations). More recently I switched my DIM to download to the E: directory listed above, and my DIM content installations to the other E: directory named above. My more recent downloads and content are there, where I intended them to be, and. Still more recently I ticked the box in DIM to delete the installers once the content was installed.

It looks at the very least like I need to clean up after the multiple CMS uninstallations. How should I go about doing that? I uninstalled from the Windows Control Panel. It's not like I just started erasing things.

Any word on the "Valentina client" issue? It didn't show up on a search of either of my drives so I couldn't give it any permission in the firewall.

swee0051_129ccb1f26

Update:
I looked at the log file (in help-->troubleshoot), and I found this error on every startup with version 4.6:

"WARNING: dzvalentinaobjectdatabase.cpp(38): DB Register Open error: Cannot establish VC_Connection with remote server.
Make sure the server address and port number are correct.
DB Register Open error: Cannot establish VC_Connection with remote server.
Make sure the server address and port number are correct."

This warning is then immediately repeated. Is this related to what you said about the Valentina client? Is it serious? Is there a fix?

Then after the log shows the plugins that loaded, I get the following:

"WARNING: QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to QWidget "", which already has a layout
WARNING: QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to QWidget "", which already has a layout
WARNING: QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to QWidget "", which already has a layout
Could not activate DAZ Decimator evaluation. Plug-in disabled.
Could not activate keyMate evaluation. Plug-in disabled.
Total class factories: 1230
WARNING: 3DConnexion Plug-in Error: Could not create Device, CoCreateInstance failed
3D mouse support library could not be loaded."

I don't know what QLayout it, but it's mentioned 3 times in a row. Is it important? I have Decimator in my product library on the daz3d.com website, but no serial number. I don't remember ever using it. ANd I simply haven't yet entered my serial number for keyMate.

The entire log entry for a single startup is 5 pages long on an Office document, but I'll post it if you think it will help.

Thanks

(I think we have a lot of good clues here and with the CMS directory confusion. Please stick with me & help me work this out!)

swee0051_129ccb1f26

I fixed it.

It seems that my multiple uninstalls of CMS hadn't completely uninstalled CMS. I uninstalled it again and still found remnants of CMS on both my C: and E: drives (2 empty folders and one not so empty). I deleted everything I could find, rebooted, and reinstalled DS 4.6. The program started, again with no CMS services. I then reset the database and restarted DS. Then I re-imported the metadata, et voila, everything's back and working.

Should I feel this fortunate that I was able to fix this problem on my own?

Two final messages for the DAZ software people: 1) I think an uninstaller should uninstall everything necessary to allow the program to function properly when reinstalled, even if it's reinstalled to a different drive. If that's not practical for some reason, I think there should be some kind of obvious indicator that I need to do some of the un-installation work manually. 2) I posted my log error/warning messages and the locations of all of my CMS directories, including the empty ones, 2 days ago. If I (an amateur with this software) could eventually fix this problem based on that information, where were the helpful people at DAZ? Have my posts on this subject been so angry that you've quit reading them?

I know that anger is not the most effective way to ask for help, and I really didn't want to go that route. I'm not proud of how I lost control and let my anger get the best of me. But DAZ, please try to see this from the customer's point of view. Where was the customer support? It turned out that the fixes to the similar problems on both of my computers were fairly simple in the end, but they were not related to any help or suggestions from the DAZ experts.

I've had problems before, and I've always found help here in the past. I don't understand why things were so different this time. DAZ has a great product, and I've spent an awful lot of money buying cool add-ons & accessories. I wouldn't have done that if the software or the customer service had been bad. It usually isn't, and I just don't understand what happened this time.