Problem running Nik plug-ins with PS CS5

Desktop machine running Windows Vista, PS CS5.  The machine is untethered to the Internet.

I was working on an image and l launched Silver Efex Pro--or tried to.  I encountered the blue screen of death--first time I can ever recall seeing this on this particular machine (which I've been using for 5 1/2 years).  After a reboot I reopened PS, brought up the image again and tried to relaunch Silver Efex Pro.  I received a small dialogue box with a "Protected Storage" header, with a message that reads:

An application is requesting access to a Protected Item

Password for

(with a bunch of indecipherable characters)

The button choices are OK Cancel and Details.

The bottom line:  I can't access any of the Nik plug-ins.  Whenever I try, the above message pops up.

I have uninstalled the Nik suite and reinstalled it--same problem.

Any suggestions about what to do?

I did a quick google about that error message. It looks like you may have a bigger problem than just Nik or Photoshop (it might have nothing to do with them in fact). It may have something to do with password is what my quick google seems to suggest and so you may want to look into that direction.

Don't use Vista if you can.

Thanks for the response--I greatly appreciate it.

I did a fair amount of searching myself--both last night and again today--and this seems to be an awfully arcane problem. This particular computer has never been attached to the Net and nothing on it has ever been password-enabled--at least not deliberately. I've never used it for anything other than image editing and image file backups. The system really isn't powerful enough to handle files from the D800 series, so when I moved to that platform two years go I essentially stopped using this computer for editing work. About six weeks ago I started doing a website overhaul that includes going back and reprocessing and resizing (for Web display) a significant number of old (i.e. pre-D800E) images, which is why I'm using it for this purpose again. When this project is done, hopefully in another month or so, the system was essentially going to be mothballed anyway since it definitely isn't worth upgrading at this stage, so I'm not going to put myself (or anyone else) through the ringer trying to solve this problem. I'll probably poke around a bit more, but I'm not particularly optimistic that I'm ever going to come up with a solution.

Not incidentally, I totally agree re Vista--this is a legacy thing with this computer and, as I said, it's headed for the graveyard soon anyway.

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

I've seen ugly crash behavior like this before with Nik plugins; in one case I could never solve it which was a contributing reason why I didn't use Nik plugins much, going to Topaz instead. Just off the top of my head, it sounds like it could be some nasty failure mode of Nik license checks fighting with Vista security and/or UAC. But it could be all kinds of other stuff, just blowing up with a misleading message since part of the error dialog you're getting is gibberish characters.

Since your Vista machine was working and was not net-connected (i.e. no updates applied to anything), I'd have to presume something got corrupted. Could be in Photoshop itself or in the Nik plugins. If the former, the trick of clearing all Photoshop preference might be something to try. If the latter, a simple uninstall & reinstall might not be good enough. As with many Adobe-related installation issues, sometimes an uninstall followed by a deep-scouring cleaning of folders, user/app data, registry, etc. is necessary to eliminate whatever was causing the problem.

If this box is going to be scrapped out soon anyway, it's probably not worth a ton of time trying to debug what's going on with it. It might be the lesser of two evils to move over what you need onto your current workstation and re-process the files for your web site redesign there, without fighting the old machine...

Thanks for weighing in, Royce.

The error sequence is interesting (in a way); after getting the initial Protected Storage message, if I click on OK the message recurs, three times, and then I get the Splash Screen for whichever plug-in I'm trying to activate with BUY and EXIT buttons and a message that says "Your trial has expired." Of course, this isn't/wasn't trial software, so that's consistent with the license check conflict notion.

I've tried resetting PS preferences--nothing. And, FWIW, I agree that it's almost certain that something was corrupted--I just can't put my finger on exactly what. I did manually clear out some temp folders and other debris that the uninstall process of the Nik suite left behind, but that didn't do any good either (not that I thought it would). I thought about installing CCleaner on this machine and doing some deep purging, and I may yet do that for giggles, but I'm not sure how deep I want to sift into the muck in this instance.

The only reason I'm using this computer at all, BTW, is because it's the best native option I have when I'm in Indianapolis. My primary system--which can easily handle D800 files and anything else I throw at it--is back in the Chicago area. (And when I'm in Chicago, that's what I'm using for the web redesign work.) When I have a lot of heavy lifting work to do (after I come back from an extended photo trip, for instance) I take that system back and forth with me, but it's a royal pain to do that (it's a desktop unit, in a very large case), so I ONLY do it when I have a lot of editing work to do on current files.

In the meantime, I've rigged up something that will work with an older laptop (not as old as the Vista machine, but more than four years old) that has all the relevant software already on it. I've hooked it up to an external monitor. It's allowing me to proceed with what I need to do, so this will probably serve as "good enough" when I'm in Indy until the site editing project comes to a merciful end.

Ah, I didn't realize the machines weren't co-located, so that makes sense why you were resurrecting the old Vista ghost. The further message about "trial expired" definitely looks to me like a Nik plugin licensing problem. There could be something buried in the registry to cover the license so if you pursued the matter, I'm guessing an uninstall followed by deep purge would be called for.

There is an off chance it could be something to do with the lack of network connection. It's getting harder and harder to run machines not connected to the net because everything wants to contact some mother ship for something. It may not have been an issue before but you've not used this particular machine in some time, it sounds like. So possibly something has timed out, or some other time-based event has clicked over that's forcing the plugins to check for something that's not checkable without network.

If the laptop works as a substitute in the interim, that's what I'd do myself...

While I've been using the Vista machine to maintain a series of shadow backups and to run a few actions on already prepped images, I don't think I've tried using the Nik collection on this computer in...a long time, I'm having trouble determining just how long it had been...probably the better part of a year. I installed the plug-ins on that unit for the first time in March of 2013, I got the new system in April of that year and probably hauled it to Indy for the first time in May, 2013. So I almost certainly hadn't even attempted to use the plug-ins on the Vista machine since then...until about four weeks ago. I definitely used it without incident for the better part of two weeks on my previous time in Indy (roughly a couple of weeks in mid-June of this year). I also used it once or twice on Tuesday evening of this week before the BSD showed up and everything fell apart. The BSD definitely did happen directly as I was trying to launch Silver Efex Pro.

The notion that this all could be a function of the software suddenly trying to "phone home" after all this time did occur to me (the aforementioned splash screen was the stimulus) but I essentially put it out of mind because I couldn't figure why that would suddenly happen now. But perhaps my extremely erratic usage pattern with regard to this computer is the explanation. For some cockeyed reason, maybe the clock started ticking when I launched Nik for the first time in more than a year last month and it ran out on June 8 (or perhaps when the computer's clock flipped to June 9. That MAY have been 30 days after I first resumed using the collection on this computer; I'm really not certain.

In any event, yes, the laptop seemed to hold its own adequately during yesterday's editing session, so my plan going forward is to stick with it while in Indy until the whole project is done.

Thanks again for all the help.