Capture NX users.

[I @ M]

I have just started transferring image files from the 2 internal drives of the editing PC to a new external drive.

After clearing out many GB of images I found that 'c' drive, operating system and programs only, no cache storage or image storage, only had about half of it's capacity despite only using about 2 gb for programs.

Further looking into the drive reveals 14,385 files that range between 6,000 and 10,000 kb each and all are sequentially numbered but mostly all in the last few months since the last update.

The files are all called --- usr_report#####.txt ---- and are being deposited directly into 'c' drive.

They contain a ton of digital gibberish as well as some recognisable elements of Capture NX adjustments.

A bit of a google seems to show up others having similar experiences.

There appears to be no control over whether the .txt files are actually created or where they should be written to in the options menu of CNX. :confused013

[arthurking83]

OK.. I saw this, and can't understand what/why/how/when and who!
(sorry, had to stop there as my W key has now collapsed :p)

OK.. went searching last night for any usr_report files on my PC.

Came back with zilch!

None at all. So I searched for *.txt files .... and boy was I sorry I did that! :Doh:

Some more info, I suppose.

you reckon directly onto the C:\ drive!? Into a folder?.. or is it literally C:\usr-report.txt ?

My guess is that it may not necessarily be a file created by CaptureNX, but possibly by the .NET framework?

can you open the file, and find out the properties of the file? Who created it, when, why... Oh! my W key is working again!! Wwwwhoooo hoooooo! :D

[I @ M]

or is it literally C:\usr-report.txt ?

Yep, literally as above


My guess is that it may not necessarily be a file created by CaptureNX, but possibly by the .NET framework?

I have no idea. :confused013


can you open the file, and find out the properties of the file? Who created it, when, why...


Link for the first one I came to below.
Are you game to open it and read it? :D

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9582534/usr_report6993.txt

[arthurking83]

OK! :confused:

cache config? have you limited cache size?
I think I remember you had it on a separate drive, so that's good.
Clear it out manually every now and then. I reckon you may be using the same cache directory as you would for VNX too?(I do.. it's easier to then manage).

Is CNX hanging/slowing down/causing any issues at all.

reading that txt file, it simply looks like an edit list of the image on your J drive... J:\Boris

it lists @USM so it looks like you did a USM routine on the file, then it lists more @USM's(some tweaks??), then it lists some Nik CE filter effects and so forth.

I'm thinking this file is the text version of the file that CNX uses to write to the NEF(in the 'sidecar' file, or XML header or whatever it's called.

You know how NEF file editing is non destructive, it;s because the edits are written to the NEF, but as a separate part of the NEF data(that's why thirdparty programs can't see the edits made to the NEF)
I know you edit NEFs and not JPGs, so this data must be something along the lines of the changes that need to be made to the embedded jpg file to display correctly??

Why it's being written to a txt file directly onto your C drive .... :confused013

I'd assume that CNX would dump any usr-report files into it's own dedicated folders, and not directly onto the C drive.
I'd expect that the .NET application would do whatever Microsoft want it too! :p

What version of .NET do you have running?... there is now a version 4(I have on my Win7 install).

strange!.. very strange.

I googled the issue, and only found one other reference to the .txt files.

Seems that it's not very common, or that (affected)people don't care, or don't know about these files.

Do you get cpnx_xxxx_tiledata folders in... <yourusername>/AppData/Local/Temp folder as well?
All these will most likely be empty folders, I'm assuming emptied out when CNX has finished doing it's stuff.

.. anyhow.. as for all the what's and why's.. I have no idea, I'm simply trying to propose various things/aspects of your PC to check through.

a usr_report file sounds to me like a debugging file.
I don't think I've ever seen a bug report from CNX of it's own accord!

BUT!! a while back when I was having troubles with an earlier version of ViewNX, where it would crash when I had any jpg image in view, I had to turn on DrWatson to do some debugging, which dumped a report to somewhere.

This was a while back, on my old crashy PC, and it turned out there was a problem with a dll file. I don't remember DrWatson dumping directly onto the C drive(but maybe it did??).

Did you enable some debugging thing'a'me'jig a while back... say 14,385 NEF's ago! :p and have forgotten about it?

Remember there was a very badly made version of NX... maybe 2.? or something that lots of folks had trouble with.. I think I remember you contacting Nikon support about it.... I'd say they asked you to debug the problem, and send them any reports... and that was 14,384 NEF's ago!

:lol2:

[I @ M]

Both cache and temp files go to the assigned folders on "e" drive just as they should and get cleaned out regularly.

I haven't enabled any debugging programs at all and the files that I have bothered to read through all look very similar except for the naming and location. Even stranger is that "j" drive is a usb stick that I was using to swap files between computers when the network stopped playing nicely for a while.

I think I will go and do a mass cull and edit a few more files and see what happens. :D

And a link to someone else having the same problems.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/capturenx/discuss/72157623315441011/

[arthurking83]

I also found link to another flickr discussion(separate to the one you linked too) as well and one answer was pointing to the NikCE vignette filter.

Tried the Color Efex vignette filter myself on an NEF image, and it did write a usr_report txt file, but not directly to the C drive as you got, Andrew.

My txt file was written to my AppData folder ... C\Users\<myusername>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ folder.

it's the only time I've ever used the vignette filter in the Nik filter suite, so that seems to be the problem!

As the person on flickr said.... it's (almost certain to be)a bug in the way that filter has been written, where the debugging switch was forgotten to be set to off once the code was ready for market.

Sounds totally silly(by Nik Software!)

This is the only instance I've used the Nik vignette filter, and I only have one instance of this usr_report txt file in the directory.

This is a Nik ColorEfex issue, not a CNX problem.

if any Adobe software users of the Nik Color Efex plug in would be kind to test this out as well.

Files are definitely safe to delete.

So every time you add that Color Efex vignette filter, you'll get one of them usr_report files!

I remember trying it a few times on my old WinXP machine when I first got the Nik filters, but never found the quality of the vignette effect as nice as the CNX radial selection tool(with the addition of a simple darkening routine).

[fillum]

Andrew I found 1 usr_report file in the C:\ root directory with a May timestamp. The file looks like a memory dump, the kind of file that is written after a program crash. My file shows Capture NX2 amongst the list of entries. Do the timestamps on your files match with any CNX crashes that you've had?

[I @ M]

I sat down and selected the first of the files and then scrolled through them to select all and watched the list fly by. :D

All the files were created / modified on 3 days. All files were created / modified within minutes of each other on their respective days.

Arthur, I deleted all the files and edited a few photos and used the vignette filter (not a filter that I use much) and no further reports have been written to "c" drive.

Phil, after reading your post, I started thinking and whilst I haven't had any NX "crashes" I did have a usb memory stick that froze the pc a while ago and it it may have been that crash that led to the generation of the files.

It is starting to look like a problem related to the memory stick crash as it did have NX modified images on it at the time.

I will keep an eye on the "c" drive in future for odd .txt files cropping up.