Moved to Windows 11

The other day I switched to Windows 11. I should have done it a long time ago since my computer was already clogged with all sorts of junk and was running noticeably slow. Before installing the new system, I made sure all my important files were stored not on C:, and after completing all the procedures, the first thing I did was launch DAZ only to see... complete emptiness. No saved scenes, no characters, nothing. For a second, my face became exactly like that of the guy from the "It's over" meme, but then I remembered how I'd already wrestled with setting up content library paths a few years ago. As it turns out, by default everything saves to system folders on the C: drive, but back then I had already moved my documents and downloads to another drive so as not to clog up the already limited free space on the system drive (I remember the times when I had to install Cyberpunk 2077 there because it was the only SSD in the system). So yeah, a day of intense frustration and wasted nerves, and I finally managed to restore everything back to how it was.

The biggest problems came from the DAZ to ZBrush bridge, because the old version of the plugin is nearly impossible to find now, and the new version requires the latest versions of both programs. Luckily for me, I still had an archive in my old downloads with the old plugin, which I originally installed back when the developers suddenly decided to make the plugin PAID. And unless you enter a serial number, it won't work, even if you installed everything correctly and downloaded the old version. Fortunately, I had a license key for the version I had "acquired for free," and after that, everything pretty much worked as intended — I just had to deal with ZBrush, which started throwing out some absolutely mind-boggling errors. That's exactly when I decided to use DeepSeek for help, and man, neural networks are incredibly useful for solving problems like this. It's a shame people sometimes rely on them too much and overuse them in creative fields, producing AI slop.

Anyway, I got everything back to a working state, apparently using up all the luck points allocated for this year. So be sure to back up your really important files, even if it seems like no big deal and everything will be fine. Also, I need to build a time machine and go back to shake my past self's hand for having the foresight to move my downloads and documents off the system drive.

P.S. The clean version of the image with Sparkle is in the attachments to this post.