This is true as long as everything has the same name and is installed in the same place. The sample library in your current computer is installed in a specific folder in a specific drive. As long as the same name is given to these folders in your new machine, it should work.

I'm on a Mac and I have my samples installed on an external SSD drive. My old drive was named "Samples". I changed the name of that drive to "Old Samples, then I copied the contents to the new SSD drive. I gave the new drive the name "Samples". When I loaded up a project, the computer looked for the samples and found them in the same place as they were before, so for me everything worked perfectly and I did not have to reload anything.

Good luck.

Makes senses.  But correct me if I'm wrong. While what you are saying may be true of third party samples, JABB and GPO install themselves to default locations, and will presumably install to default location on new computer as well, which should be the same. No?

That's logical, hopefully it's true.  Unless MM has changed to default locations.

You're on Windows, I'm on a Mac, so this might be different. On my Mac, the heirarchy is computer/users/jeff/(then everything else) The Jeff folder was created when I registered my Mac. If I get a new computer and registered it under my full name, Jeffrey, then there would be no "Jeff" folder, and that change alone would be enough to mess up the path that Finale uses to connect to Garritan.

I hear. Thanks

Found this:

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/217663758-Setting-up-Garritan-libraries-with-Finale-and-PrintMusic

That's probably the key, right?

That looks like it. It wouldn't hurt to verify all of this with tech support.

I will. Thanks for your help

While we're on the subject, I'm noticing that dynamic marks have little to no effect on VST sounds. This was not true of of my traditional MIDI modules

VST sounds should respond to Finale's dynamics. This is controlled by Human Playback.

By default, if you use the setup wizard and create a file for violin, Finale will load a Garritan violin sound into the Aria Player. The default preferences in Human Playback were written for the Garritan instruments. So you should be able to write a few measures of music, add some dynamics, and you should hear those dynamics when you playback.

If you don't hear dynamics, the problem could be:

1. Human Playback is not being used or the settings have been changed.

2. Instruments other than Garritan notation have been loaded.

3. The playback parameters for the dynamic expressions have been changed.

It's also important to know that there are many different manufacturers of VST instruments and they all work a little differently from each other. So one set of Human Playback instructions will work for one library (i.e., Garritan) and not for another library. (i.e. VSL)