Calibration
When retouching, having a calibrated monitor is one of THE MOST important aspects of your workflow and setup and your monitor should go through the calibration process every so often. Every month for me but I wouldn't expect "every week" to be unreasonable. Calibration would also take place during any slack period that would allow an hour or so of computer time.
Calibration Woes
When you invest in a monitor calibration device such as the, Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite, you expect to get a few years use out of it. So, you will appreciate my dismay when, on an upgrade to Windows 7 64-bit, my Spyder just refused to work. A few days of technical "fiddling" came to no avail and so the Spyder was assigned to the "stuff" box and dust began to gather.
Calibration Revisit
During a boredom period this Christmas day (2015), the TV wasn't particularly good and nothing else was happening, I decided to have another go. Google presented two articles I hadn't seen before...
http://sabrent.com/support/knowledgebase.php?article=14
http://support.datacolor.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/619/0/windows7-does-not-install-spyder-driver
... that seemed to light a beacon of hope.
The Skinny
The main problem I had was Windows complaining that the Datacolor driver for the Spyder3 was not signed so, although you could install it fine, it would not load when you plugged in the Spyder3. I will now outline how I got past this and, although i cannot guarantee this will work for you, it worked fine for me.
As follows ....
AS ALWAYS, make sure you have installed the latest Spyder3 software from the Datacolor website. It is 4.0.2 at the time of the article.
Go to Start Menu and type "cmd.exe" in the Search Bar and press <Enter>. (Remember you must be logged on as Administrator)
OR you can go to "All Programs", then "Accessories", right-click on "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as administrator".
1. Now type the following and press <Enter> after each line:
bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON
2. Restart your computer
3. This will disable your Windows 7 driver signing.
You now need to re-assign the driver to the Spyder3. This may seem convoluted but it worsk so just follow along ....
Plug the Spyder3 into a USB port attached to the main body of your computer (NOT a USB hub, keyboard or monitor)
The message "Device driver software was not successfully installed" may appear. Then the Program Compatibility Assistant may appear and say:
"A recently installed program tried to install an unsigned driver"
Close these messages.
* Open Device Manager control panel
* "Datacolor Spyder3" will be listed under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" with yellow triangle badge
* Right-click and select "Uninstall"
* "Confirm Device Uninstall" dialog will appear
* Mark the checkbox "Delete the driver software for this device"
* OK
* Unplug the Spyder
* Plug the Spyder back in
* Driver Software Installation will run and fail
* "Datacolor Spyder3" will be listed under "Other devices" with yellow triangle badge
* Right-click and select "Update Driver Software"
* Click on "Browse my computer for driver software"
* Under "Search for driver software in this location" click "Browse"
* Navigate to
* Computer -> Local Disk (C:) -> Program Files (x86) -> Datacolor -> Spyder3 Driver
* Be sure that "Spyder3 Driver" is highlighted
* Do not highlight any folder inside "Spyder3 Driver"
* click OK
* click Next
* Driver software will install
* "Windows has successfully updated your driver software"
You should now be able to successfully start up the Datacolor calibration utility that will now find your Spyder3 calibration device. Hurrah!
One more thing, you probably noticed a "Test Mode" notice bottom left of your monitor, to get ris of this open up a command prompt, as you did at the beginning, as administrator and issue the following command ...
bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING OFF
Now reboot your machine.
Happy calibrating.
(Note: if all of this still fails there is still another, less elegant but nonetheless workable technique to get your Spyder3 working with 3rd party Argyll drivers for the Spyder. I used this for a while. It is outlined here ....
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/50454217 )
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