It's true Nikon no longer sells parts to independent repair facilities, but Nikon is not the only place to get repair parts. I have sources all over the world, from Texas to Chicago and all the way to India and China. In fact, I get some parts from the same supplier as Nikon. I pay a little more than they do for them but I make up for it on the labor.

Granted, there are some repairs that simply need to be done by a Nikon facility, but by and large, most repairs can be handled with ease, gray market or not.

I hate to buy these things because after spending the money, they don't solve the problem. Going back several days, I could have paid $40 for a program, but I found a free alternative. That didn't work, either. I've been working with this MS tech for 11 days, and we're up to five pages of messages now. When he suggested Linux, I think that was a desperation move.

The problem is that I have backup folders in an EFI partition, although there's no logical way they could have gotten there. Apparently, this happens occasionally. I finally managed to access the partition and give it a letter name, but since Windows is protecting it, I have to get another program to delete those files. In order to do that, I have to boot from a flash drive using a program called Partition Assistant. I cannot boot from the flash drive.

Has anyone one bought a refurbished camera from Nikon? Were there any problems with the camera? Did you have to send it back? Do they have high shutter counts?

I see that Nikon is offering 10% off their refurbished cameras and this may be a great deal if I know that I'm not getting a camera that has 10,000 shots on it already. I know they are gone over by the Nikon techs but a very used camera won't be worth the money. Is there any type of set standards that keep it from being a very used camera?

Thanks for all your info!!!

Well I think I have the proper solution. After reading some of your great responses I think it would be best to learn my D3200 inside and out, while at the same time sharpening my new era DSLR skills. I have found there to be a few differences mostly in how the camera works and also learning to trust the technology. I remember doing crazy things like backing ISO 100 slide film out of my only camera to put ISO 400 B/W in for the football game after school. You had to be able to do this without a dark room, while riding on the team bus. Oh yeah and not expose a single frame of the slide film because it had shots on it already. Then write the number of shots exposed on the can so you would not forget when you reloaded it....hahaha... I digress.

I have a relative who understands this computer crap a lot better than me. I still don't have Windows 10 and can't figure out why. But anyway he said that during the installation Microsoft turns off a program or maybe thats not the proper term, it may not be a program but maybe it's a switch of some sort and this allows them to know what sites you visit. He said it is possible to turn this switch back on to block this info from going back to Microsoft. I don't know how but I'm sure there are people here that do.

Rich