# Installing PCGen Manually

If you have PCGen currently installed on your system, you can either install the new version into a new directory or overwrite the old version on your system. The PCGen team recommends strongly that you install new versions into a new directory.

## Windows Users

We recommend that you use the Windows installer.

## Mac Users

We recommend that you use the OSX Mac Installer, pcgenXXX_mac_install.dmg.

This configuration of the program includes all the necessary files included with the program package, or app file. You can still access the files by right clicking the program and choosing Show Package Contents. See the notes included in the installer for all the details.

## Other System (or Advanced) Users

Pick the package with the features you want and unzip it. It is highly recommended that you use a new directory for every new release. Once the package is unzipped, see docs\index.html for the full documentation.

Note: Installing a new version over an old version of PCGen may not run well. See Upgrading PCGen for further info.

A fresh install is best performed by unzipping pcgenXXX_full.zip to a desired folder on your computer. To run the application, run either pcgen.jar (the Java executable) or pcgen.bat (Windows, which will also open a debug window which will display any errors during the run) or pcgen.sh (UNIX and Linux).

To transfer characters from one version of PCGen to the new version of PCGen, copy the pcg files from the "characters" directory from the old version of PCGen to the new version.

NOTE: If you copy PCGen from one location to another you must delete the options.ini file. This file holds directory locations that will no longer be valid! Deleting the options.ini file will reset PCGen to all its default settings. As such, note your current settings before proceeding. A new file will be created when PCGen is started if necessary.