If the Dell support assist scan is causing a problem for PhotoLab, the DxO support team should be made aware of it.
Malrk
Absolutely, I agree. But afterwards complete uninstallation may be required in order to clean up the mess.
Was the problem you were having a few months back also a result of that Dell utility program?
Mark
FWIW: I have a NVIDIA GPU (GTX1650) and I’m using a Dell system (with Dell Command|Update running regularly), and I’ve never experienced this problem.
Confirmation: I’ve just installed PLv512 and the “Nik Collection” button is visible & active.
John M
No, I don’t have Dell computer. Mine is HP.
Good morning!
@barthovis Seems you are not alone - Installed NIK Collection not recognised by Photolab 5 but your problem is even worse as you loose NIK after each restart of the PC as far as I understand.
I suggest you to get connected to the support (support.dxo.com) as most probably Nik developers will need a direct access to your PC.
Regards,
Svetlana G.
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Good morning & thanks Svetlana. I started the topic referred to in your post & I have a partial workaround. After one of the PL5 updates I did the usual uninstall & reinstall of NIK & checked the registry key again. This time the NIK Collection entry was there. I exported the registry key to a safe place &,when it happened again I doubble clicked on the saved key and PL5 showed NIK Collection as being installed without all the pfaff of uninstalling & reinstalling NIK. NIK Uninstall Key.txt (2.3 KB). I have attached a copy of the key in text format. You would need to change the extension to .reg to import the key back into the registry & change the version number if NIK is updated. It looks like something is knocking out this registry key &, hopefully, the DxO developers can figure out what. Incidentally I noticed that with the latest update of PL5 the problem only arose after I restarted the laptop. Subsequent restarts did not affect PL5 seeing NIK Collection. I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 2 with a Nvidia Quadro T2000 graphics card. I hope this helps. Geoff Foote
Hi Svetlana, the problem does not occur after every restart, but it did occur when restarting right after running Dell Support Assist utility. It’s possible that this app does some registry cleaning that breaks the PhotoLab/Nik connection, since this has apparently been a problem with other users.
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Hi Barthovis, I agree that the problem does not occur after every restart but, in my case, restarting after a PL5 update. As I said above I use a Lenovo laptop not Dell so it’s possibly more to do with the PL5 updates than the Dell Support Assist utility. Have you tried the registry solution I described above rather than the uninstall/reinstall route? If you don’t want to click on the text file in my previous post then run regedit & find the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Nik Collection when the link is showing in PL5. Right click then select export to save the key as a .reg file. Next time the problem occurs simply click on the .reg file to import the key back into the registry instead of unistalling etc. PL5 should then see NIK collection. The only caveat is that, if NIK Collection has been updated since you saved the key you need to open the .reg file in Notepad & edit the line “DisplayVersion”=“4.3.0” then save the file with the .reg extension. I hope this helps. Regards, Geoff
Thanks Goeff! I have not tried this yet because the Nik button has remained active in PL5. I appreciate the instructions and I will do that next time the problem occurs.
-Bart
You’re welcome Bart. If the Nik button is active in PL5 it might be as well to export the key to a safe place on your PC now so you can restore it if necessary later. Geoff
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Once again the NIK Collection button was inactive this morning witj the notification that NIK was not installed. There was no apparent reason for this, no updates to PL5 or Windows. Again importing the NIK Collection Uninstall key resolved the issue. I will raise this again with support & see if they can figure out what is happening.
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I can confirm that running the Dell Support Assist utility does disable the Nik button from Photolab, even without restarting the computer.
Since some other users who do not run the Dell Support Assist utility seem to have a similar problem, it suggests that they may be running some other type of support utility program that also disables this link. My own experience with some clean up utilities is that their default settings occasionally cause unexpected issues.
Mark
Yes, that seems likely. I did notice that running CCleaner does not disable Nik, even though it does a registry cleanup.
I also use CCleaner and have had no problems with it my. However, I briefly was using Iolo System Mechanic which caused some small issues on a few occasions so I stopped using it and I uninstalled it from my system.
Mark
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I think I’ll hold off on using the Dell utility for now. On my system at least, that is what seems to be directly related to the problem.
As I said above, I can confirm that it is not just the Dell Support Assist utility that breaks this link. I am using a Lenovo laptop & running their update utility does not disable the link. I aso use Ashampoo’s WinOptimiser program to clean up my laptop. I have just tried running this &, once again, the NIK button in PL5 is still active even after restarting the laptop. I have raised this as a support ticket with DxO again but, apart from a ticket acknowledgement, I haven’t had a response.
Assuming for the moment that your problem is caused by an interaction with some other third party software, especially if this software is not ccommonly used by many PhotoLab users, it may be more difficult for DxO to isolate the cause of your relatively isolated problem than if they had your machine on their workbench. It is far easier for them to analyze a problem experienced by many people and which they can reproduce.
Mark
I agree Mark & I think I may have found the culprit. My machine has an application called Lenovo Vantage & I also subscribe to an add-on to this called Smart Performance (which may be similar to the Dell Assist Utility). Part of this is a check for registry errors &, although it was set to scan once a week on a Tuesday, looking at the log there seems to have been some additional scans performed between these. I checked that the NIK button was active then ran a scan manually. Sure enough, the NIK button was disabled. Reimporting the NIK key restored the button in PL5. I have reset the scan interval to 1 month &, if the NIK button becomes disabled, I will check to see if an unscheduled scan has taken place. It has taken a bit of detecyive work but I think between I might have solved my problem. Still no idea why it just wipes out this key though. I’ll contact Lenovo & see if they have any ideas. Thanks for all your inputs.
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