Nikon Capture NX-D 1.6.1 and WIN7 end of support

[Fons Baerken]

Remaining apps in the start list can be uninstalled from the list itself, rightclick..

[Birna Rørslett]

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?

[Fons Baerken]

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.

[Birna Rørslett]

Perhaps that can explain the observed difference. I "upgraded" from Win7 Pro or Ultimate.

[Fons Baerken]

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.

[Fons Baerken]

I may add on a different machine i have a win 10 pro edition with none of these issues mentioned. Microsoft?

[Øivind Tøien]

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.

[Øivind Tøien]

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.

[Øivind Tøien]

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.

[Birna Rørslett]

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.

[Øivind Tøien]

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. 

[Birna Rørslett]

"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.

[Øivind Tøien]

Oops, yes of course, corrected above.

[Matthew Currie]

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.

[Birna Rørslett]

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.