Nonsense. The 105 f/2.5 is one of the best lenses ever made in that focal length. In fact, you could call it legendary. It should be fine on any of Nikon's DSLRs with that AI ring, though your metering options may be limited to aperture priority and manual.

It is an FX lens, meaning it should easily cover the sensor on a DX camera without vignetting. You get vignetting with a DX lens on an FX camera, since they are designed to cover a smaller sensor.

What do you see when you look through the viewfinder now? Try it on both cameras. Of course, you will get the field of view of something like 160mm FX equivalent with the D7000.

I'm about to go to bed. (Hey, isn't it after 2AM where you are?) If the camera has a manual focus mode, make sure you're in it. (My D810 has a little lever on the side near the lens, AF and MF. I don't have time at the moment to look up how to do it on your camera.). The other thing is that it may have a mode where the shutter won't fire unless the camera is in focus. Mine has that, and it can be disabled. This is too complicated to figure out when I'm half asleep, but these are the things I would look at. I'm 100% sure that you'll get it to work properly.