[Ken-L]

Yesterday I received my "Upgrade" to Nikon Capture NX 2. I already had NX installed, so I purchased the less expensive Upgrade version. Installation should have been 1-2-3, but in MY case that turned out to be 1-2-3 HOURS!

It started when I inserted the CD into my Dell's Phillips-DVD/CD Burner drive and nothing happened.....it didn't "auto-run"..... Okay, I've seen that before, so I double-clicked "My Computer" in order to manually start the installation. Uh....no DVD/CD Drive icon showed...... So, I rebooted. Same thing.

I'm not sure how much time I spent going through the motions......I tried everything I knew (for 10 years I had a computer consulting business). Finally I had exhausted all my options and thought, "Now don't tell me my drive died!"

The drivers would load okay but Windows Device manager kept reporting that it could not find the hardware. The last time I used this drive was in June......

My next option was to call Dell Support. I shuddered at the prospect of having to try to understand a telephone tech perhaps some 9,000 miles away...... I dialed the 800 number, and punched the numbers in response to the questions and finally was answered by a live person. That was when I was glad I had bought the XPS machine, because it gave me access to a better tech support group!

Not that this was going to be easy..... I had to go through almost every step the tech wanted me to go through....almost..... When I was asked to do something and I would reply, "You've gotta be out of your mind if you think I'm gonna do that....", the tech actually went to different possibilities..... Of course, we did go through everything I had already tried and then a few more.

At the beginning of our conversation I told the tech that I had not used the drive since June, and the only major change was that I had installed Service Pack 3. Had he checked into that first, we would have saved a lot of time!

The tech said we needed to edit the Registry. After I backed it up we did. We deleted both the underfilter and the overfilter for the Phillips DVD/CD Drive and that was all it took. Apparently SP3 changed the values or added the filters, and since I had not used the drive since installing that Windows update I didn't know there was a problem! I have two backup external USB hard drives that get updated every night automatically so I seldom bother with making DVD or CD backups.

Now that the drive was working I tried to install NX 2...... Tried. It would not accept my product key! Finally I gave up and called Nikon Tech Support. What a pleasure.
I had read that the upgrade required the use of the Product Key from the original Capture NX installation. It would have IF I was installing the upgrade without NX already installed......since I was installing over the original NX what I needed was the new Product Key which was on the back of the upgrade CD jewel case....aha!
Now Capture NX 2 is installed on both my desktop PC and my laptop. Note - you must also download the newer versions of Nikon View and Nikon Transfer.

While I was perusing the Nikon support site I also found that there was a new camera firmware update available for my D300 which was just posted on July 29th, so now that's done too......

I have not yet played with NX2 but I'm sure all this "work" will be worth it.....and in some perverse way I'm glad I finally realized I had a problem with my DVD/CD drive!