chris_a3

<p>Interesting. Just to add another twist to the story, for reasons unrelated to the scanner, I've downgraded to Windows 7 x86.<br>

The scanner works fine, and it continued to work fine even after I restored the original overclock.<br>

So, on this computer ...<br>

XP: Doesn't work at all<br>

Win7 x64: Works ok without the overclock<br>

Win7 x86: Works ok with the original overclock (and the original driver off the CD, too).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>PS.. re-reading this thread, I'm wondering if Les was referring to the OC in his earlier comment</p>

<p><em>"perhaps it's your specific computer setup as obviously it was not intended to function as you have it."</em></p>

<p>If so, I guess he was right. I've had the computer for about three years now, and until very recently, when I moved from XP to Win 7, it's worked flawlessly (apart from the scanning!), so I never suspected that there was anything the matter with it at all.</p>

<p>In case anyone's interested, I think I've got to the bottom of why scan acquisitions were failing with my Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED...</p>

<p>... an unstable overclock!</p>

<p>The computer came from <a href="http://OverClockers.co.uk">OverClockers.co.uk</a>; it has a Quad 6600, factory overclocked from 2.4 to 3.3 GHz. It was always completely stable, or so I thought. Recently, it was blue screening randomly, but only with a grid computing client running, which thrashes the processor and memory.</p>

<p>To cut a long story short, I used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95">Prime95</a> to torture-test the PC, and it threw up errors. On reducing the OC from 3.3 to 3.0 GHz, the errors disappeared, and the computer was again stable with the grid computing client (<a href="http://boinc.berkeley.edu/">boinc</a>).</p>

<p>I then got the scanner working with Windows 7 x64, as described in <a href="00Ryck">this</a> extremely helpful thread, and tried it out...</p>

<p>Works perfectly ! I'm really pleased, as you can imagine.</p>

<p>Hope this is of some interest and/or help to someone.</p>

<p>I've had a K10D since January 2007. I didn't upgrade to the K20D since it wasn't enough of an upgrade. <br>

Then when the K7 came out, I didn't upgrade again since it seemed that the AF was still on the slow side, especially in low light, and the high ISO noise worse than the K20D. Since money was tight, it was quite easy to allow those perceptions (which is all they were) to discourage me from upgrading.<br>

I'm hoping that the K7's successor has significantly faster and more predictive AF, and better high ISO noise performance. <br>

Quiet AF in video would be the icing on the cake. The cherries would be being able to switch off dark-frame subtraction properly!<br>

If it has these, it would be a cracking upgrade, and I'd be upgrading as soon as I could.<br>

I couldn't care two hoots about more FPS, or more pixels.</p>

<p>@Mendel:<br /> Yes, same cables for both. On the PC that it doesn't work on, there are 6 USB ports - four at the back and two on top. Tried them all. I have lots of other devices usually in those ports - all work perfectly.</p>

<p>@Les:<br /> Thanks. I've done 450 frames now in total, about 150 since changing computers. Just feeding a strip in every 10 minutes or so while doing other things. 7 mins +/- a few seconds to do a strip of four.</p>

<p>I've found a few nice ones in amongst the dross - I'll put up a few perhaps. <br /> Mostly though, it's 20+ year-old memories that have been flooding back. Quite an experience, actually.<br /> Thanks again.</p>

<p>Well I'm very grateful for all these suggestions - and I will definitely give VueScan more of a go, since everyone speaks so highly of it.</p>

<p>But following Les's comment, I thought I'd give a different computer a go, to see if it was something to do with the one I'd been using, which is a Quad 6600, 3.3 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, lots of HDD.</p>

<p>I fired up an old Athlon machine (XP 2500+, 2 Gb RAM), installed Nikon Scan on it, and have now scanned about 50 frames, with ICE on, <strong>and not a single error</strong> .</p>

<p>Why on earth might there be such a difference? I've never had an inkling that there might be anything wrong with the newer machine, or any of its USB ports, and I use it for a lot of heavy stuff.</p>

<p>Obviously I'm delighted that I now have a realistic workflow (and my thanks to Les for his link, which I'd already found and was using), but it's very strange that a much more powerful computer has the problems, whereas the older, less powerful one doesn't.</p>

<p>Hmm, it does seem to be better with ICE off - I scanned a strip and it ran through without stopping.</p>

<p>However, ICE is the very thing I need. VueScans IR cleaning would do, I suppose, for most of the negs, but I haven't been able to get scans with natural looking colours with it, whereas the AF/AE with Nikon Scan gives very pleasing results.</p>

<p>Any clues on how to adjust the Vuescan settings appropriately? Not asking for a tutorial, but a pointer to the relevant information would be appreciated.</p>

<p>Colour negatives, yes.<br>

What worries me is how Nikon Scan fails to acquire so often (at least a couple of times from each strip of 4 negs). There's nothing obviously wrong with the strips, and the negs are reasonably well exposed.</p>

<p>A little supplementary info... this is what it logs along the way:</p>

<p>Thumbnail scan started 25/09/2009 13:54.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Thumbnail scan completed.<br /> Item 1 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:55.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 2 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:55.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 3 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:56.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 4 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:57.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Batch scan started 25/09/2009 13:58.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 1 Scan started 25/09/2009 13:58.<br /> Auto focus completed.<br /> Auto exposure completed.<br /> Scan failed.<br /> Batch scan was canceled by the user.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hi all, just bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED, and started on the mammoth task of scanning some 4000+ 35mm negs going back 25 years or more.<br>

I'm using Nikon Scan 4.02 (as stand alone app, on a PC, XP pro SP3, Quad 6600 at 3.3 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, plenty of hard disk space), mostly default settings, 8 bits and ICE on fine.<br>

Frequently getting this in the log file:<br>

Image 1 Started 25/09/2009 12:09.<br /> ERROR: Acquisition Failure.<br /> The image was not saved.<br>

This happens whether I use single scan or batch, although it seems to be less frequent if I scan a crop of a single frame.<br>

I've tried VueScan, which seems more reliable in this respect, but I'm not finding its dust/scratch removal as effective as ICE with the Nikon software.<br>

I'd be grateful for any ideas.</p>