Getting your Nikon Coolscan to work on W7 x64  

spoolin01 said:

Is that the latest firmware for that model? I've just started using several 8000 ED models with Windows 7 and saw the warning that they needed the latest firmware (1.11) to work with Win7 x64. When I first started acquiring these, a couple worked on Win7 with FW 1.05 (AMD cpu with VIA PCI firewire card). Then I changed PCs (AMD to Intel) and firewire card busses (PCI to PCIe), and the ones with 1.05 stopped working (got the "unrecognized film carrier" error message). I haven't sorted this all out, but when I did the FW upgrade on one of the machines, it started working OK again. I also have the situation where using one firewire card, the scanner works OK, using another it is recognized but does not work - looks like the symptoms you see).

I'd recommend starting over with Nikon Scan on a Windows XP machine (or maybe Vista) with a PCI firewire card (might have to try more than one chip maker), since those were the last supported configurations. Then you can troubleshoot your Windows 7 knowing the scanner (and FW card) work OK. At this point I'd suspect that virtually every component might make a difference when used in some combinations: motherboard, CPU, firewire bus (PCI vs PCIe), firewire card chip (VIA vs TI), Nikon firmware, and drivers for all of those.

I'm far from expert in understanding what goes on here, but my impression so far is that it will be easier to fit the PC hardware components to the scanner than it will be to "tune" the scanner to work with any particular set of PC hardware.

You could also try VueScan as they claim to provide their own drivers.

I just installed Nikon Scan via the "Getting Nikon Coolscan LS-40, etc to work with w7" it worked 2 weeks ago, then I guess my firewire card wasn't played in correctly and it stopped working. Now it's perfectly lodged in there and tied up, but my scanner is still "recognized" but won't recognize the film adapter/carrier and accept film. Actually now that I think of it I batch-scanned something and when I come back I guess I didn't see the preview images? So I restarted Nikon Scan and all of a sudden it's greyed out, I can't click any functions or click preview/scan. Do you think the issue is my scanner not recognizing the film adapter/carrier? how would it stop working in a matter of an hour and it's fully recognized by my computer via device manager. I'm so confused!

I don't have sufficient insight into either the scanner or PC side of this to know what is going on, other than that my brief experience with several of the 8000 ED models suggests the they are very hardware-finicky, due to the drivers no doubt. A simple test might be to uninstall the drivers and software, and try over. The more certain approach to diagnosing whether it's a hardware problem with your scanner, or a system configuration issue, would be to go back to a supported configuration - XP or Vista, and even an originally recommended firewire card.

With the 8000ED, I get an error message that the film holder is not recognized.

spoolin01 said:

I don't have sufficient insight into either the scanner or PC side of this to know what is going on, other than that my brief experience with several of the 8000 ED models suggests the they are very hardware-finicky, due to the drivers no doubt. A simple test might be to uninstall the drivers and software, and try over. The more certain approach to diagnosing whether it's a hardware problem with your scanner, or a system configuration issue, would be to go back to a supported configuration - XP or Vista, and even an originally recommended firewire card.

With the 8000ED, I get an error message that the film holder is not recognized.

Thank you! I think you're right, before getting any repairs i'll try getting a better firewire card/proper XP setup even though it worked with the initial setup there could be a lot of factors rather than simply saying its the scanner itself.

Hi,

The first thing you should do is make sure the scanner has the latest firmware for the machine. It's also mentioned in the guide. Nikon seems to have moved things around so you'll have to search to find if there is one for the 8000ED. I know the 4000ED because I used it for my 4000ED.

Outside of that, not sure why the scanner doesn't recognize the filmstrip as it should. I've never had any issues when I was running my 4000ED under Windows 7 using the posted guide.

Anyway let us know if you solved the issue.

Thanks.

Trying to get my Coolscan 4000 ED to work on win7 64-bit. The instructions by sygnus21 seem straight-forward, but when I try to install the downloaded "nikon scan 4.0.3" it says "can't install on this operating system. How can I get it to install so I can complete the procedures you suggested?
GORDON

OK, I understand. I tried again, and checked to make sure the firmware was updated...but when I ran the firmware upodater is says "No Nikon 4000 scanner connected." So it seems it's a vicious circle -- can't run the scanner on my win7 64bit PC, and can't do the fix needed until it's running... weird.

Gordon

Make sure the FireWire card is working, as well as the cable. And did you download the scanners driver listed in the instructions?

Dear sygnus21,

During dowloading process of ns403en_vista in particular on the drivers page, do I need to select or deselect drivers? I have Nikon Coolscan 8000ED

Many thanks,
Alexander