New Laptop - Installation Blues

whispers65

I'm supposed to be getting my new laptop today if all goes well in celebration of my birthday Friday.

My current laptop is an Alienware running Windows 8. It is about 3 years old. My new laptop will be Alienware also (I play games a lot). I know it's not a great "rendering" machine but due to 2 break-ins a laptop is the way to go for me since I can take it to work. If I could leave the computer stuff home and feel good about it then it would be a different story.

The new one comes with Windows 7 so I'll decide whether to upgrade now or later.

As far as Studio, I plan on doing a reinstall as I get error messages now and I think a new install of the program, DIM, and content will probably fix it. I plan on "re-creating" all of my characters anyway since they are based upon the old files.

I need to install Photoshop, Bryce, Carrara first I think and make sure the folders are set up and then content.

Or can I just install DIM and it will handle everything? I don't know.

I have a lot of installs to do. At least with my non-Daz content, I am going to just copy the folder onto a external drive and then recopy. I tend to leave the content on my laptop so I will have it with me. Packing up and carrying everything to work every day is a hassle so the external drive stays at home.

Any suggestions on making this process go smoother? I just want to make sure everything is installed correctly to help alleviate the errors I work with now.

Jaderail

To my way of thinking your on the right track. Install Photo Shop and others first. Then Install DAZ Studio and use the DIM to install the DS content to one Folder only, and to install the Photo Shop plugins and such. Then set the Content Paths in DAZ Studio to see your content.

Things to take note of. The Carrara 8.5 package includes DAZ files and if you have content Doubled, installed in two folders, and DAZ Studio reads both folders is can cause the Content to FAIL in DAZ Studio. So when it comes to content be sure to only install it to one place and then point your programs to it as needed.

whispers65

Thanks. If a miracle happens, I'll be off tomorrow (my birthday) which will give me a 4 day weekend to get everything done. I'm replying on the new computer. I did some installs last night. I'm still debating on upgrading to win 8 first. I may do that. Win 7 is fine but I was using Win 8 and haven't had any problems with either. I did two installs last night of other things and it took 6 hours lol. Ugh I always hate this part of getting something new.