It's not just you. I reported this as a bug (with a test file) and was informed that the dev team at Carrara could load my file fine. Apparently, the likely cause is that I am not using Daz 1.7.1.6. They are right - I am using 1.7.1.5. But in any case, the fact that the file loads fine for them, but not for me, with no invocation of Daz (presumably) involved, seems to have been ignored.

Ah well. I asked for (and recieved) a full refund on Carrara 6 - its absolutely loaded with bugs of all descriptions. I'll wait a few months, and assess things. To be honest, I'm probably going to switch to Vue 6. Been playing with it for a while now. The interface is not as easy as Carrara, but the rendered results are way better, at least for outdoor scenes. And it loads Poser files. Every time. No issues.