Rhino SR7 update breaks V-Ray 1.5

[wcmansp]

We were planning to deploy the recent (mid-December) Rhino 5 Service Release 7 update from McNeel when we noticed that afterwards V-Ray would fail to load, giving a "missing .dll dependency" error. What we think is happening is that SR7 is a full install and creates a new destination folder ("Rhinoceros 5.0") in Program Files. It does the normal Rhino upgrade thing with third-party plug-ins, leaving the files in their original locations and just moving their registry keys into the "Plug-ins" section of the registry for the new Rhino install; the new installation looks for the plug-in in the old location. The problem appears to be that V-Ray 1.5 had also installed a handful of .dlls in the original Rhino "System" folder (cgauth.dll, python26.dll, QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll, QtXml4.dll, svml_dispmd.dll, vray.dll) and this System folder gets emptied as part of the installation of the new version, so now these .dlls are missing. Dropping them into the System folder for the updated version got things working again.

Have others noticed this?

[wcmansp]

I'll add that, as we manage a student lab environment, we were using Group Policy to deploy the SR7 .msi file; individuals who upgraded by using the "Help/"Check for updates" Rhino option didn't get a new Program Files directory. We also noticed that other third-party plug-ins we use leave their .dll files in the "Plug-ins" directory, either at the "Plug-ins" level or inside their own folders in "Plug-ins". Rhino leaves the Plug-ins folder alone when it updates so that may be a safe/standard place to put them.