Best computer for CR-X running AFGA's NX

Hi JP,

where is the unit located?

Sam

Unfortionatly the PC has to come from AGFA or they will not give you a license file for the software. I do not believe that your software is to old but if you are upgrading and since the pc has to come from AGFA you will be upgrading to the newest software. My recommendation would be to find an independant dealer to do the upgrade. It is still going to be costly as the last pc i purchased from AGFA was around $3,000 - $4,000 and it will take a couple of hours to do the install. Also these PCs will not have any long term storage as AGFA NX is not a PACS. How long they will store your images is dependant on use as it is a watermark of how full the harddrive gets. Once harddrive reaches upper watermark it deletes images. As for the license expiring the NX computer must stay connected to the network so the dongle and license file sees the mac address of the pc. Hope this helps.

Dr JP,

Sorry to hear you bad service. And no I do not work for Agfa. When is your

 chiropractic office  located (that is what State? We have serval Agfa Units although only a year old and have been Great.

We have used an authorized dealer rather than agfa and have had very good service from them...

From my experience, all the workstation I have seen have Intel based motherboards (HP or Dell). From the manual I don´t see any special reference to any optimized instructions for Intel processors so I believe you can go AMD if you want to economize.

Since many of my clients use their NX´s as kinda small PACS, you can set it to 999 days in the configuration, but 280 days on a 500Gb HD (fast hard drive, at least 7200rpm, RAID 0 array for speed, I mean mad speed, I have it on a client´s NX who has a small pacs I built for him and still has images since 2013) will do, be aware that you will have to install some Defraggler and Ccleaner to keep Windows smooth.

And for the memory, do not go the 2Gb route, do a full 4Gb on the machine and your system will be just fine for the years to come.

Also, do put a nice known brand PSU on it, you do not want to blow up on some ramdon important day.

I haven´t said what kind of processor you should put on because most of the NX I have work with do have at least a Core2 processor, so your baseline should go from there.

The workstation you mention, is it a Dell? or HP? if it is a Dell (as I think), you do need to install more memory, you can ghost the hard drive to another speedier, that solves the issues on those models, they are painfully slow but because they were for NX8300 to 8500, after (I think) NX 8500 they started using HP workstations.

Believe me, the software is not bad, as for the licenses you really need to find a dealer because those should not expire unless you have a wrong installation or bad dongle.

Hope it helps, and remember, most of the problems on Agfa NX systems are always down to Windows being fragmented, lack of memory, slow hard drives, or just sloopy installation (been there, fixed it, and walked fine).

Upgrade your system DR. use DR system, we can use clone computers without installing license compare to CR system. We can install PACS computer for the archieving of your images. I recommend IQVIEW PACS is good system. About the License of agfa, since you both that license and installed now in that computer, now you need to buy another computer because the old computer is always fail or aging. You need now the technical supports of the agfa since you need to install a new license of your CR system. One suggestion is replace your CR system with another brand, or thread in it, or upgrade your system to digital. CR system is aging, its 120 seconds and very hussle to process images compare to digital is only 2 or 3 seconds and very comfortable.

I ORIGINALLY POSTED THIS QUESTION BUT STILL HAVEN'T RESOLVED THE ISSUES. I POSTED AN UPDATE AS A NEW QUESTION. THE POST IS AS FOLLOWS:

After having problems with my 2007 PC to the point where it would no longer start up, I had it serviced in order to transfer the info from it's internal hard drive to a portable one so that I would not lose any data (no, it wasn't backed up previously). It was recommended to me that I replace the computer or I would likely encounter continuous problems.

I've installed operating systems on PCs before and are assuming installing my NX software (NX 2.0.6805 SU1) would be easier, if anything. We recently renewed our user license and have the USB key required for the software to operate. We've had nothing but problems with the 2 AFGA techs --- all issues with the previous PC unresolved and one even sent us a $2,500 bill for services not performed (seriously). That is why I would rather install the software myself. To date, we've had AFGA bills totaling $4,000 (the first part was for the new license), and STILL --- no working computer. I simply do not trust AFGA anymore as I believe the company has grown so large that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing anymore, and worse --- simply doesn't care.

I have all of the CDs that came with my system, including:

1) CR 30-X System User Documentation

2) NX 2.0.6805SU1, NX Instal Doc, Typ 5175/100, Typ 5175/105, Installer CD, CRE_1309A (all on one CD)

3) CR 30 Pattern CD v 1.0

4) CR Full Leg Full Spone Option for NX Workstations (this last one which I do not care about as I rarely shoot full-spine)

Any advise would be most appreciated. Apart from a new computer (and paying a tech to install it if necessary), I need to avoid pouring more $ into this. Thanks!!!

ANY ANSWERS WOULD BE MOST APPRECIATED. THANK YOU!!!

Sorry to hear that mate.

Sadly, I am seeing quite a big trend of bad service from Agfa reps. Maybe it is me or people just don´t know how to get the job done, let me give you a simple walktrough of how are you going to succed.

First, get a good machine, but not so good. Since the last thing I saw here was a intel core 5, let´s begin from there.

Second, get lots of ram, 4gb is good enough if the machine is going to be just to work with the CR,  if you are going to use it for something else, do go beyond the 4gb.

Get a good firewire card, A GOOD ONE. Even though if you are going to use Windows 7 or XP (yes, some people still like it), before installing the CR you will have to downgrade the firewire driver to the generic one, to avoid BSOD (something with the driver). And I tell you a GOOD firewire because of the connector, do listen to what I say: if you ever connected the firewire cable wrong, the PMI board will be gone. That why you have to buy a good firewire card that has a good and strong connector that has good strong metal that doesn´t bend (some oem firewire models had such a weak connector, you could install the cable backwards and boom "shi%&$% happened".

Also, do consider using Windows XP if you export images to CD/DVD, some versions fail to export on Windows 7.

Get a good hard drive, a fast 7200rpm or a reliable SSD, either route you will have to create a C: and D: partition (in that order, C: drive at least 20Gb, D: drive to whatever left, from the Windows install, so the NX software on the installation runtime detects the second partition for the database and images, is better, believe, you do not want the Windows partition mixed with lots of fragmented parts of dicom images).   Or get both, the SSD drive will be the main drive, the other non-ssd drive will be your backup, using Windows built in backup system, set it for once a week on fridays after hours, before that some defragmentation will be good and that system will be beatifully running forever.

Reuse the same monitor, since in the NX configurator you will have to use the same display resolution and monitor settings.

BIG THING TO REMEMBER BEFORE ANYTHING, SAVE YOUR ALF FILE AND YOUR XML, those are your license and configuration, do not lose them, ALSO COPY THE MAC ADDRESS FROM THE OLD MOTHERBOARD and put it into the new one, in that way you won´t need a new license file (ALF file).

After you have all that, you can proceed.  

I've a similiar issue. Old PC with running Windows XP and NX 2.0. PC does a few unexpected reboots a day and should be replaced. I've joined a tech-training CR 30-X at AGFA Munic some years ago and I know that if there is anything changed on the PC, a new license File is neeeded and very hard to get a new one.

If I understood right, the ALF-File is just bound to the MAC-Address of the PC, but how to copy (spoof?) the MAC-Address to the new PC?

Is there a way to contact you by eMail?

Regards,

Lucas