NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Processing & Publication => Topic started by: mxbianco on January 16, 2020, 09:02:52
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This morning I browsed the Nikon Download Center, and the following came out:
- New Capture NX-D Version 1.6.1
- New ViewNX-i Version 1.4.1
- New ViewNX-i & Capture NX-D Version 1.20.010
- New Distortion Control Version 2.0018
There is added support for the Nikon D780 and Coolpix P950
They have removed support for Windows 7, which has more impact on many users. I haven't tested it yet, should mean that the installation procedure exits if install is attempted from a Win 7 machine.
Version 1.6.0 is still supporting Win7
Note that I still am able to launch the camera firmware updates from a Win XP machine, even though Win XP support terminated on 2014 (and in the instructions it states you can't launch the application from a Win XP machine, BUT IT WORKS!)
Ciao from Massimo
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Just run the installer in a suitable compatibility mode ... you should be able to install on pre-10 Win.
Nikon always have had the inclination to ditch official support for older OS.
That beng said, the upgrade (or downgrade, depending on your point of reference) from Win7 to 10 was quite easy and just a few minor quirks had to be sorted. I did easily 8 computers in less than 20 hours. After installation, however, one needs to spend time removing all the bloated junk Microsoft foists upon us poor end users.
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Just run the installer in a suitable compatibility mode ... you should be able to install on pre-10 Win.
Nikon always have had the inclination to ditch official support for older OS.
That beng said, the upgrade (or downgrade, depending on your point of reference) from Win7 to 10 was quite easy and just a few minor quirks had to be sorted. I did easily 8 computers in less than 20 hours. After installation, however, one needs to spend time removing all the bloated junk Microsoft foists upon us poor end users.
There is no compatibility mode for higher than Win7 on a Win7 system, so no luck there.
Just tried the install on my Win7 system and the installer responds, no joke:
"ViewNx-i @ Capture NX-D does not run on your operating system".
This is rather upsetting, as there is no change log for this version as I can see, so perhaps the only version change is that MS has declared Win7 obsolete and Nikon made a change to the installer. (Could someone who actually was able to install it update us on this?) Edit: I now see above that it added support for the two recently released cameras. I have hard time believing that Nikon made so much change to the applications that they actually do not run on Win7 if they were allowed to be installed. One thing is to not provide updates aimed at win7, another is to force users hands like this. Perhaps forced by the compiler? Or perhaps Nikon will not run Win7 test machines any longer and thereby declares it uninstallable as it is untested on the system.
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Microsoft ended the support of Windows 7 yesterday, so it may become unsafe quite soon. It's unfortunate how nowadays you have to get constant supply of security updates - couldn't they just have designed it to be safe in the first place and not add anything that could violate that.
Windows 10 has been working very well for me.
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Has anyone here tested CNX2 under Windows 10 ?
MS did end support yesterday, but they provided a last monthly update then too. So there is no way our win7 systems suddenly are less safe because support ended yesterday. (Noramlly there would be another month before the next monthly update).
I just hate the user interface changes in Win10, and there is no way of knowing how many legacy applications I run that will break, or if I even have proper drivers for my hardware.
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Download Classic Shell and use that instead of the stupid tile version Win10 "blesses" us with. Use the Powershell facility to get rid of all the junk software accompanying Win10. What photographer needs "XBox" game software on their work computer?
My various proprietary software generally thrive with Win10, though. Actually, some better that Win7 after the last few updates. Win7 did have a less idiotic user interface, but Win10 can easily be tweaked to behave quite similar to its predecessor.
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You need to log into the admin account to install the i-view plus nx-d suite!
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Fons, that has always been the case, but in this case "run as administrator" does not help, it refuses install as soon as Win7 is detected.
Thanks for the Classic Shell tip, Birna; I will keep that in mind.
As I am happy with what camera bodies I currently have and the version of CNX-D runs reasonably well, I think I will cool it down a bit, and not rush into an upgrade as there are so many other things that can potentially break. Perhaps I can find a Win10 VM to test some of my legacy applications. Comments on CNX2 would be greatly appreciated.
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Right a local account with admin rights doesnt work, a full separate admin account is needed to install software under win 10.
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Oh so sadly true! >:(
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After installation, however, one needs to spend time removing all the bloated junk Microsoft foists upon us poor end users.
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Nice link here:
https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/ (https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/)
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Just tried running the Distortion Control 2.0018, it expands correctly both under Win XP and WIN 7
Being a simple compressed file self-extractor, there is no version checking here (same for all other firmware updates).
For Nikon Capture/Nikon View, it would be a better option for Nikon to display a warning "Windows 7 environment detected", with a disclaimer, and then the software gets installed anyway. So responsibility on accepting some glitches and/or a program crash passes on to the user. The way they did it has the least impact on Nikon (no extra work on their part, wiping their hands clean of the problem), except for their reputation...
I don't like this type of behaviour. Nikon can -and should- do better than that!
Ciao from Massimo
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Nice link here:
https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/ (https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/)
Thanks Fons, I happened to be on the same pages, many good tips there.
I was rather shocked to see the amount of advertising in Win10 (Win7 none), apparently even in a clean installed system, in this article article about how to remove them:
https://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windows-10s-built-in-advertising/ (https://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windows-10s-built-in-advertising/)
I regard the ad-blocker in my browser to be the most important security measure on my computer.
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Has anyone here tested CNX2 under Windows 10 ?
MS did end support yesterday, but they provided a last monthly update then too. So there is no way our win7 systems suddenly are less safe because support ended yesterday. (Noramlly there would be another month before the next monthly update).
I just hate the user interface changes in Win10, and there is no way of knowing how many legacy applications I run that will break, or if I even have proper drivers for my hardware.
yes, nx2 runs ok on win10
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Thanks, Armando, good to know. Finally a bright point.
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Remaining apps in the start list can be uninstalled from the list itself, rightclick..
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Right a local account with admin rights doesnt work, a full separate admin account is needed to install software under win 10.
Not on my systems?
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With the latest builds of win 10 i found out to have a separate admin account for some software to install including the nikon suite, while i have the enterprise edition of windows 10 that may be the reason.
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Perhaps that can explain the observed difference. I "upgraded" from Win7 Pro or Ultimate.
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I updated from a pre-installed win 8 to win 10 on a Dell workstation, at some point windows started nagging about activation wherefore i installed a free enterprise edition but since then i need an admin account next to a local account.
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I may add on a different machine i have a win 10 pro edition with none of these issues mentioned. Microsoft?
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Well, I got CNX-D/ViewNXi version 1.6.1 running in a windows 7 VM. What I did was to install it in a Windows 10 VM (a temporary development licence downloaded from Microsoft) and then I simply copied the files under the \Program Files\Nikon folder over to the Windows 7 VM that already had the previous version of CNX-D/ViewNXi installed. So my suspicions that the denied install is just by administrative reasons and limited to a block in the installer is partly confirmed with the reservation that I have not performed further testing. This is likely not a procedure one would want to perform on a regular basis, however if absolutely needed for the upgrade to a newly released camera it might work in a pinch.
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After some more testing in the Win7 VM, I also copied CNX-D/ViewNXi version 1.6.1 it into my main Win7 installation, and have been using it to edit/process files from my D500 without encountering any problems.
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Thanks for the Classic Shell tip, Birna; I will keep that in mind.
I kept experimenting with the Win10 VM, and besides Open Shell (the open source after comer and latest release of Classic Shell), I found WinAero Tweaker (also free) particularly useful to change the system to be more Win7 like, or to ones own liking. It seems that MS tried making some settings more easy to change in Win10; however as with the Mac, when one gets beyond that surface layer, it seems that it is less user friendly and requires fairly high skills to make changes - like messing with the registry. The WinAero Tweaker helps avoid that.
With a tweaked Win10 it is certainly not the end of the world if/when I have to upgrade Win7 (I have not encountered any snags with respect to running my legacy applications - drivers more difficult to test in a VM though), but it is quite irritating that something that has such a nice functional/aesthetic look and has worked that well for many years has to be thrashed.
Birna, did you just do the upgrades or full clean installs?
I have usually liked clean installs, however I am not sure if that is necessary/worth the time when upgrading from a well functioning and previously clean installed Win7 that does not drag along too much garbage.
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After making a fall-back clone of the disk drive(s), I did just direct upgrades on all my Win7 boxes. Went smoothly and effortlessly. Then, one has to spend the "saved" time, and more, removing all the bloatware and stupidity Win10 so richly graces the end user with.
I do have a test machine with Win10 installed on it for some years and used WinAero Tweaker a lot on that installation. Plus registry hacks, of course. Thus I wasn't entirely unprepared for Win10.
The UI, even with Classic Shell and WinAero Tweaker, still isn't as slick as Win7. The failure to deal properly with windows title bars is a major annoyance in 10.
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Thanks for the information, Birna.
I have seen reports that even a clean install comes with a lot of bloatware, so may be one would have to go though that removal phase anyway.
Yes, the Win10 7 interface really gives the impression of being some kind of alpha software that the programmer put together in a hurry and did not have time to polish.
I have been able to control the colors of the title bars to somewhat resemble what I have in Win 7, although not with the same patterning (see below). Windows 10 did not seem to allow changing color of the inactive title bar, and the inactive title bar was almost white and not distinguishable from the menu bar in the light theme. I think it was the inactive title bar setting in WinAero Tveaker that was the solution. However the Aero Lite setting I tried before that was not to my liking, so I think the rest of the colors came from the windows 10 theme settings or from the Open Shell. I am not sure if this was your problem or something to do with the text displayed?
What I have not managed is to get the white text in the Taskbar as in Win7. It does not obey the taskbar text color setting in Open-Shell (suspect it only shows in a dark theme). Also I cannot make the taskbar as slim as I had in Win7.
I suspect the Win10 development VM I am tweaking already had a lot of bloatware removed by the MS techs who set it up, they probably liked the ads just as little as we do. ;D
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"Yes, the Win7 interface really gives the impression of being some kind of alpha software that the programmer put together in a hurry and did not have time to polish. "
I take it you refer to win10 here? If so I couldn't agree more.
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Oops, yes of course, corrected above.
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Not on my systems?
I downloaded several different versions of NX-D on my win 10 laptop. First time it didn't need admin account. Second time it did and along with not installing correctly it killed the previous version until I set up an admin. account. Third time it didn't need anything. I haven't tried a fourth, which might install itself invisibly or require a direct link to Venus but I won't know until I try.
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Went back to Win7 on my main work station as I could not get such a central functionality as drag-drop and file copying to work consistently and reliably. I see online a number of complaints from Win10 users on this issue as well so I'm not alone. There is just a single system that fails and try as I might I cannot bring it to heel as it were. So Win10 is out there.
As I fortunately had the sense to make a complete and individual backup clone of all machines before switching to Win10, reverting to Win7 for any troubled system is a matter of minutes.
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I've had NX-D running without software issues on two separate copies of Win 10.
Sadly what I really want is Capture NX2 - i miss the ease of use of that far more than any issues arising the move from Win 7 to 10 :(
if I could get it to digest my D500 files, that is what I'd use...