filmscanners: Constant crashes with Nikonscan 3.1/Coolscan 4000ED/W2K/Dual CPUs. Anyone got this combo to work?

["Stuart Nixon" <sns@ermapper.com>]

Hi.

I see that a lot of people have been reporting that NikonScan
is very buggy and crashes a lot.  I am having similar problems.
Has anyone actually got this software to work under W2K/dual CPUs?
There don't seem to be any reports of solutions that I can find
(but lots of reports of problems). In addition to checking
comp.periphs.scanners, I am trying to get a feeling for how
common this problem is (and any solutions) so I can harass Nikon.


So, has anyone either got:
-       NikonScan 3.1 to work without crashing on a dual CPU W2K config; or
-       A solution to stop it crashing

It crashes when running as a stand alone application. The system
configuration is NikonScan 3.1, Super Coolscan 4000ED scanner,
Windows 2000 Server SP2, dual Intel PIII CPUs, 1GB RAM, 4GB VM,
IDE drives (some soft W2K RAID 5), SCSI DLT tape backup and CD-R/DVD-ROM,
and Epson 1280. NikonVue for the D1X is also installed, and the
usual range of Photoshop/PSP/Bibble/Cumulus/etc application software.


This system has proved to be very robust and stable - except when
running Nikon's software.

Nikonscan 3.1 crashes 1 out of 3 times during a scan, and
can never complete a batch scan of a strip.  Given I
have 10,000+ negs & positives to scan, this is more than a
bit of a worry.

Event log just notes the application crashed.  Debug tracebacks
crashes either in the kernel (most of the time), or in one
of the NikonScan DLL's.  Crashes are always in the same
code locations.  Note that when applications crash in kernel
level code, it often indicates buggy drivers.
However, the scanner is working very well with VueScan.
Perhaps NikonScan uses some proprietary calls into the
scanner drivers? Turning on/off rotation/ICE/ROC/GEM
has no impact on the crashes. Nikon support has been
the usual unhelpful "We don't know."


Although Vuescan works well, I want to use NikonScan because I don't
have time to colour balance each negative (no matter what I do,
there does not seem to be a white point / colour balance combination
that works robustly for VueScan - any tips?). Also, I need ROC/GEM
for a slew of 20 year old negs that need cleaning up.


Any help at all would be greatly appreciated - I am desperate
for a solution.  Even just knowing that *someone* out there is
successfully running NikonScan 3.1 on a dual CPU W2K system would be
of assistance (and what CPUs/motherboard you are using).


Please feel free to email me directly at sns@ermapper.com
and I will summarize back to the list.


Thanks in advance & regards,


Stuart