NVIDIA Desktop Manager Prevents Igor Commands From Executing

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The NVIDIA nView program is a desktop manager, described at http://www.nvidia.com/object/nview-display-us.html.

We have had a few reports from Igor users of the strange behavior on Windows 7 and Windows 8. The symptom is that commands in Igor's command line refuse to execute when the user presses Enter.

Here are the steps to reproduce the problem on Windows 7 or Windows 8 with NVIDIA nView installed and with any version of Igor:

1. Right-click an item to display a dialog. For example, right-click a trace in a graph and choose Rename which displays the Rename Wave dialog.

2. From that point on, a command entered in the command line can not be executed by pressing the Return key. The command just sits in the command line and is not executed.

3. Restarting Igor clears the problem until the next time they do step 1.

Igor user Christoph Marty has traced this problem to the NVIDIA nView program. Christoph found the following:

1. The nView program was installed automatically - he does not remember asking for it to be installed.

2. The problem happens every time he performs the actions listed above.

3. The problem goes away if he disables the nwiz.exe startup item using the msconfig program. (On my Windows 8 system, msconfig takes me to the Startup tab of the Task Manager. You can launch the Task Manager by right-clicking the task bar.)

4. The problem persists in the latest version of nView, currently 141.24.

5. He wasn't using the features of nView and does not miss it.
I have another report that says that you can prevent the Nvidia Desktop Manager problem by starting Igor as administrator or setting it to run in XP compatibility mode. You can do both of these using the Compatibility tab of the Windows Explorer Properties window.

I filed a bug report with Nvidia on this but have heard nothing. You can file a bug report at https://nvidia-submit.custhelp.com/app/utils/login_form/redirect/ask

December 17, 2015 at 09:19 am - Permalink