Digital Cameras and PTP in Windows 2000?

[Dave-H]

I recently upgraded my Nikon digital SLR camera from a D-70 to a D-5000.

The D-70 had a "mass storage" USB mode as well as a "PTP" mode.

It appeared in "My Computer" as a disk drive, and worked fine.

Unfortunately, when I got the D-5000, I found that it had no "mass storage" mode, only "PTP".

I spoke to Nikon about this, and was told that the mass storage mode had now been dropped from all current cameras as "all current operating systems" support PTP.

Windows 2000 apparently doesn't, and I was told that if I didn't upgrade my operating system I couldn't connect this camera (or any new camera for that matter) to a Windows 2000 machine, and the only way I could get the pictures from it to the computer was by using a card reader.

This I can do of course, but I was wondering if anyone had managed to get PTP working on a Windows 2000 machine.

There is a PTP driver on the Nikon software disk that came with my new camera.

It's not intended for my specific camera, but with a bit of INF file hacking I was able to get it to install rudimentary support for the D-5000 (and the D-70 in fact!)

When I connect the camera, it now appears in Device Manager as a still image device in "Scanners and Cameras" in Control Panel.

I don't seem to be able to do anything with it though.

It doesn't appear as a TWAIN source in any of my imaging programs.

I'm not quite sure how PTP is actually supposed to work, and I don't have access to an XP or later machine to try it so I know what to expect.

Certainly the "Nikon Transfer" software (which installs and runs fine on Windows 2000!) doesn't recognise the camera as a source, which it should do if things are running properly.

Anyone any ideas on this?

Thanks, Dave.

[Dave-H]

Bit disappointed that there's been no response to this.

I have tried a few more experiments.

I do have a Windows XP SP2 installation disk, and I've tried transplanting a few PTP support related files over to Windows 2000.

I transplanted ptpusb.inf, ptpusb.dll, ptpusd.dll, and sti.inf, which is referenced in ptpusb.inf.

This allowed my camera to be detected as a generic "Digital Still Camera" in "Scanners and Cameras".

It was also reported to be "ready" and passed all the diagnostic tests.

This was great improvement on the results with the Nikon generic PTP driver, which seemed to rely on the OS support files already being there.

Unfortunately, even with the generic XP driver I still don't seem to be able to actually do anything with it!

I am assuming that I still need the necessary XP WIA support, and I'm not sure how to add that.

I also tried a Canon camera Windows 2000 TWAIN driver I downloaded (Nikon seem to have never published a TWAIN driver for their cameras, only for their scanners.)

This installed fine, but wouldn't recognise my camera (perhaps not surprisingly, as it's a different brand!)

So, anyone any other suggestions?

[dencorso]

If I'm not mistaken, there's a thread about WIA in the 9x/ME forum. Maybe looking at how it's done for 98 gives you some idea of what you'll have to do for 2k. Just a longhshot but, then again, there might be something to it.

...

Found it: WIA for 9x/ME!

I guess you'd need both XP WIA and PTP. BTW, did you check ptpusb.inf, ptpusb.dll, ptpusd.dll, and sti.inf and ptpusb.inf for missing dependencies? And, are you sure all of XP PTP is installed solely by ptpusb.inf?

[Dave-H]

Thanks Den!

I've had a good look at that, and I'm thinking that I might install it on the Windows 98 side of my machine first just to see what it does, and then maybe try it on Windows 2000 as well.

[Dave-H]

Well, I installed the WIA from Windows ME on Windows 98, and it seems to work as it should.

Quite as impressive as NUSB, but that's a whole other (very long) story!

It recognised my old Epson SCSI scanner, and gave me an alternative TWAIN interface to the Epson one (not as good I don't think) and another TWAIN source which is a Kodak 210 camera (which must be a pretty early digital camera, and seems to be serial connected rather than USB! I would imagine that the average cellphone camera is now better.....)

Anyway, it didn't help with my Nikon camera.

I tried installing it using the modified Nikon PTP inf file, and it appeared in Device Manager and in the Scanners and Cameras applet in Control Panel, but registered as "unavailable".

Incidentally, and this is off-topic, installing the WIA patch deleted my Scanners and Cameras cpl file, and I had to put it back. Is it supposed to do that?

Anyway, back to Windows 2000.

Looking at the patch, I'm a bit loathe to just try installing it on Windows 2000, as I'm worried that it might have path information which would only be valid in Windows 98.

Worth the risk? (After a back-up of course!)

[jaclaz]

Just a semi-random idea, but it seems like that camera:

http://www.camera-warehouse.com.au/p/nikon-d5000

has MPT.

For MPT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

a package from MS does exist:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

which is said to work on 2k also.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bb190309.aspx

http://www.i-freeware-download.com/info/Me...-ifpd-9959.aspx

of course your mileage may (and will) vary.

jaclaz

[Dave-H]

Thanks again jaclaz!

I can't see any reference to MTP in the documentation of my camera, but I downloaded the package and installed it.

Strangely, the installer wouldn't work straight away as it was.

It kept saying that it couldn't determine the free space on my drives, which is something I've not seen before!

Anyway I extracted the msi file from the package, and that did install OK.

I couldn't see what it had actually done however, and it certainly didn't do anything obvious, or make anything work that didn't before.

It is part of an SDK so I'm wondering if it's just developers' tools and doesn't contain any runtime files.

Anyway, I've uninstalled it again for now.

I had the PTP support files from XP installed again, with my modified inf file, and the camera was again appearing as an imaging device in Device Manager and the Scanners and Cameras applet in Control Panel, and appears functional.

However, it still doesn't work in any software as an image source, so I suspect that the vital WIA service and files that are the interface stage between the imaging device and the software are not present or not functioning.

I also started to get stop errors, relating to hal.dll, after the camera was disconnected.

It would be fine while connected, but after disconnecting it, usually after about 30 seconds, the machine would blue screen.

Not good obviously, and I don't want to get into substituting more XP files for the 2000 ones willy-nilly without knowing what I'm doing. When I've tried I've just ended up with a system that won't start!

I'm wondering now if just trying to install the Windows 98 patch on Windows 2000 might be the next experiment to try.

If I'm backed up I don't see that it will do any permanent harm, even if it doesn't actually work.

[dencorso]

Hi, Dave!

Yes, I think you should try it. If it ever works, you can then update the new files it adds to XP versions and test again. If it doesn't, you can always fallback to the backup and then we begin to study what are the differences between the XP and 98 WIA structures, in order to be able to give it still another shot at making it work. Good luck!

[Dave-H]

Thanks Den!

Unfortunately when I tried to run the patch, I just got an error message that "the package is not compatible with the version of Windows you are running"!

I could just extract the files from the package and install them manually, but if maximus-decim put that warning in, I guess it's probably a non-starter.

[dencorso]

I'd not bet on it. MD was thinking that Win ME files are not for the NT-family OSses, of course. But you may install it by hand, taking care to omit any file for which a newer version already is in the system, and see what comes of it. If it works, it'll be worthwhile to search for the correct xp files (probably from sp1 or sp2) to upgrade them afterwards. Worse that can happen is to trash your system completely. But nothing that falling back to the backup won't solve...

[Dave-H]

Well, thanks for the input jaclaz and decorso, but I think I'm on the point of giving up on this.

To cut a very long story short, I've got as far as having new "Scanners & Cameras" icons in "My Computer" and Control Panel, which run and throw up a new window, which immediately closes again!

There's nothing in it during the brief time that it's on screen either.

If I run the wizard it just says that it can't find any devices, even though my scanner (which is detected fine by the system on Windows 98) is connected.

More worryingly, the PTP system doesn't detect my camera as a working device using the Windows ME dlls.

If I replace them with the XP versions, it does come up as a working device, but when I unplug it, about 30 seconds later (not straight away surprisingly) the system BSODs with a stop error.

What I really need is an XP system to compare things like files and registry entries with, but unfortunately I don't have that luxury.

As I think all I'll end up with is something that is compromising the stability of the system, and probably doesn't work properly anyway, I'll give it up as a bad job, unless anyone else has any suggestions. Still, it was worth a try!

I really would like to try and get the system to work with the camera on Windows 98 though, but that's not for this forum!

The trouble with Windows 2000 is that with a very few exceptions, like blackwingcat, people haven't tried to get later OS facilities working on it to any great extent, unlike Windows 98, where there seem to be loads of personal projects to keep Windows 98 working with later technologies.

I assume this is because Windows 2000 was never a mass-market domestic OS, whereas Windows 98 was.

Many more people used and still use 98 therefore than ever used 2000, which was mainly used in business environments.

I'll never abandon Windows 98, but I do wonder sometimes whether I would be better off ditching 2000..........

[no1none]

Unfortunately when I tried to run the patch, I just got an error message that "the package is not compatible with the version of Windows you are running"!

That might be just Microsoft Stupid Installer's issue (msi )

You can modify msi with Orca and have no more problems with "OS not compatible" problem (but of course it doesn't guarantee the software will work on older OS).

I have patched i.e. Windows Defender's msi installer to install on any NT5+ version, and in spite of what Msoft says (that it is for XP SP2 or newer only) it installs and works fine on Windows 2000, plain-vanilla XP, and XP1...

[Dave-H]

Thanks for that no1none.

I am familiar with Orca and have used it quite a few times to make msi files compatible with Windows 2000.

Unfortunately that isn't the problem in this case, as the installer isn't an msi file.

I used Universal Extractor (another great tool BTW) to extract the files from the installer, in an attempt to do a manual installation.

This has come to nothing unfortunately, as I think there are probably just too many system file version dependencies.

[PVU]

I recently upgraded my Nikon digital SLR camera from a D-70 to a D-5000.

The D-70 had a "mass storage" USB mode as well as a "PTP" mode.

It appeared in "My Computer" as a disk drive, and worked fine.

Unfortunately, when I got the D-5000, I found that it had no "mass storage" mode, only "PTP".

I spoke to Nikon about this, and was told that the mass storage mode had now been dropped from all current cameras as "all current operating systems" support PTP.

Windows 2000 apparently doesn't, and I was told that if I didn't upgrade my operating system I couldn't connect this camera (or any new camera for that matter) to a Windows 2000 machine, and the only way I could get the pictures from it to the computer was by using a card reader.

This I can do of course, but I was wondering if anyone had managed to get PTP working on a Windows 2000 machine.

There is a PTP driver on the Nikon software disk that came with my new camera.

It's not intended for my specific camera, but with a bit of INF file hacking I was able to get it to install rudimentary support for the D-5000 (and the D-70 in fact!)

When I connect the camera, it now appears in Device Manager as a still image device in "Scanners and Cameras" in Control Panel.

I don't seem to be able to do anything with it though.

It doesn't appear as a TWAIN source in any of my imaging programs.

I'm not quite sure how PTP is actually supposed to work, and I don't have access to an XP or later machine to try it so I know what to expect.

Certainly the "Nikon Transfer" software (which installs and runs fine on Windows 2000!) doesn't recognise the camera as a source, which it should do if things are running properly.

Anyone any ideas on this?

Thanks, Dave.

Dave, the Canon issue has driven me a little crazy. My folks are on a Win2K system, and the Canon camera I got for them has new Canon software that wasn't intended for 2K (I can't get around new libraries calling on DOT NET 3).

First off, you may want to look into CAM2PC. I think that Nikon gets the OK.

For the Canon TWAIN driver, download TWAIN68.zip or TWAIN69.zip. Then get USBDeview from NirSoft. On a XP machine, plug your camera in and then run USBDeview to see what the device ID is. Then decompress the TWAIN zip file and hack up just 1 of the INF files in the WIN_2K98 folder to call on your camera.

I haven't had time to really mess with CAM2PC. It did work great with an older Canon, but I haven't tried it with the new one yet. I intend to this weekend.

But the hacked INF file in the TWAIN driver (to include my camera ID) did allow Windows to fully recognize my camera. For a quick fix, I installed Picasa, and Picasa worked well with the Canon TWAIN driver. The only downside is that Picasa creates a temp file for pictures you download - so you will have to copy over your pics before you close Picasa.

But since it's not a Canon, your Nikon may not work with the Canon TWAIN driver.

But for a very quick fix, I would try that CAM2PC. The only problem is that CAM2PC hasn't been updated for a while.

jclaz, thanks for the info on MTP. I will look at the MS package since it is said to work on 2K - but there also seems to be a need for WMP10.

[Dave-H]

Thanks for that.

Actually I've now bitten the bullet and upgraded to Windows XP, so the problem has gone away!

It's all useful stuff for anyone else with the same issue though, who may not be able or wish to upgrade.

I did in fact install and try the Canon TWAIN driver, and as you surmised, it worked but wouldn't recognise my camera.

It seems that Nikon never produced an equivalent package.

I also looked at Cam2PC, but that didn't seem to do the trick either.