Nik colour effects 9 install issues

Nik Collection Nik Color Efex topics
1

Hi,

I am having install issues with colour effects 9 and Windows 11 Pro. It downloads ok but the install proceeds very slowly before stopping at 50% going no further. I have tried it with the antivirus and firewall off, done complete removal and re install, Tried Nik cleanup.

Not had an issue with any other DXO software.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Ian

2

There is some Windows-specific problem that I am seeing for several years already:

  • downloads from Chrome browser always work fine, no stalling

  • downloads from applications are regularly stalled after some point and there is no networking activity visible

  • if I enable VPN (I use ExpressVPN) all applications download fine, no stalling!

As a result, every time when I expect an application to download significant amount of data, I enable VPN and have 100% success

Searching in Google I have the following answer from AI:

This issue is common in Windows 11 and usually indicates that while your internet connection is stable, the specialized services managing background app downloads (like the Microsoft Store, Windows Update, or Game services) are being throttled, blocked, or are experiencing cache corruption.

This is definitely Windows-related, not Internet-provider. My PC is dual boot (Win11 and Linux) and e.g. steam (gaming platform) downloads work very fast on Linux but are severely throttled on Win11 (once again turning on VPN makes download fast)

The problem usually manifests itself when an application needs to download more than 1Gb of data (in my experience, the critical size varies from 600Mb to 1.5Gb). And with Nik collection 9:

  • nik collection installer is about 800Mb
  • after installation, the size of C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection 9 folder is about 4.2Gb

So it is reasonable to assume that the installer needs to download significant amount of data

Anyway, if you do not have any VPN subscription, you can probably try with one of the free ones, e.g. ProtonVPN

3

Ianlaw,

Same issue here too. I contacted DXO and they said they were going to look into it. So, Iā€™m waiting. Tried several other options suggested by others on this forum, but so far, no success. Will let you know if DXO responds and provides a solution. Works fine on my desktop, but canā€™t get it to load past 50% on my laptop. Nik 8 loaded fine on both without any issues.

1 Like
4

The release notes for Nik9 state in ā€œPractical informationā€ that ā€˜A stable internet connection is required for installation on Windowsā€™. I wonder why MacOS was omittedā€¦
No problem here, except for having to wait about 15 minutes for downloads to complete.

5

For what itā€™s worth, my last two Windows laptop computers had very unstable wi-fi interfaces. The older one gave no visible indication of a problem, yet would struggle with downloads and some web browsing. The newer one is worse, showing some visible disconnections despite a strong signal with the router either just a few feet away or one or more rooms away. A wired connection or adding an external wi-fi interface (USB) works fine. I hope you find a solution to your problem.

6

Summary of my experience with Nik9/Win successful installation:
The following files were downloaded to a subdirectory of ā€œC:\ProgramData\Package Cacheā€, removed after installation: SAM-Matting.zip, SAM-Decoder.zip, SAM-Encoder.zip, DepthEstimation-DepthEstimation.zip, DepthEstimation-DepthSR.zip, NikEfexTextures-3.1-vol1.zip, NikEfexTextures-3.1-vol2.zip. The last two files are probably about 1GB each ā€“ they contain PNGs files used by AnalogEfex (which are already compressed). Some ā€œExecution Providersā€ for WinML may also get downloaded but these are relatively small. Downloading took about 15 minutes, transfer speed varied 2-6 MBytes/sec. Thatā€™s approximate data, didnā€™t follow it closely.

Only after all files were downloaded the true installation began, which lasted on my PC about 30 seconds, using Kingston SKC NVme disk ā€“ unzipping, copying, registry update, config files, adapting Nik8 config, etc.
In theory installation could hang on hardware checks, e.g. to know which EPā€™s to download and verify minimal requirements, but that would probably happen at the start of installation, just few seconds after completing last user input. My guess is that your hang happened during textures download.

7

Ianlaw: I disabled my firewall and antivirus and the program installed succesfully. Also, DXO contacted me again and said they were going to update the software to make it easier to avoid this issue.