How To: Install NVIDIA Nsight

The NVIDIA® Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition software comprises two main pieces of software:

• The Nsight Monitor, and
• The Visual Studio® extensions.

You need to install Nsight Monitor on both your target and host machines. Note that in order to run a CUDA-based application, the target machine must have a graphics card that supports CUDA. See the System Requirements for NVIDIA® Nsight™ Software for a complete list.

To install the NVIDIA Nsight software:

1. Obtain the installer from NVIDIA. Choose the version of the installer that is appropriate for your operating system.
   
2. Run the installer.
3. On the first screen, accept the license agreement, and click Next.
4. The next screen allows you to customize the features that will be installed. These include: 
   • Nsight for Visual Studio 2010 and/or Nsight for Visual Studio 2008
   • Nsight Monitor Visual Studio Edition, and the HUD Launcher
   • Nsight C++ AMP Debugger for Visual Studio 11, and the Nsight C++ AMP Debugger for MSVSMON
   • NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit v4.2, v4.1, and 4.0.
     
5. On the next screen, select whether or not you would like to participate in the NVIDIA Developer Tools Software Improvement Program. Click Next.
6. Click Install to begin the installation process.
   You may get a warning message, asking you to verify that the software you are installing is from a trusted source. In this case, click Yes and the installation will continue.
7. Click Finish to complete the installation.
   

The installer puts several files on your hard drive. The default installation directory is:

On a Windows 32-bit system:
C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2.2\

On a Windows 64-bit system:
C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2.2\

Running the Nsight Monitor

Security and Authentication

The Nsight Monitor requires administrator authentication to run. UAC can affect how Windows prompts you to authenticate.

SCENARIO 1 (UAC not enabled and remote debugging): 

Suppose that you have configured your system for remote debugging, and that you log on to the remote machine as User1. If Windows User Account Control (UAC) is not enabled, User1 can start the Nsight Monitor only if the user account has Administrator privileges on that remote machine. For example, User1 could start the Nsight Monitor if User1 is:

• A member of the Adminstrators local group, or
• A domain account that has been added to the administrators group on the remote machine, or
• Defined by Group Policy to have local administrator privileges, or
• An Administrator account.

SCENARIO 2 (UAC enabled and remote debugging):

Suppose you log on to the remote machine as User2. If Windows User Account Control (UAC) is enabled, when you attempt to start the Nsight Monitor on the remote machine, you will be prompted to provide authentication.

• If User2 does not have administrator privileges, you will be prompted for a username and password that has Administrator privileges.
• If User2 has Administrator privileges, you will need to click Allow when prompted by the User Account Control window.

 For more information on UAC, see: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/what-is-user-account-control

NOTE: Scenario 2 tends to be a more secure method for launching the Nsight Monitor because the administrator privileges apply only to the running of the Monitor.

Non-ASCII Characters in Hostnames

If you install the Nsight Monitor on a machine that uses international characters you must modify one of the Visual Studio configuration files. An international character is a Unicode character that is not in the set of ASCII characters, such as Cyrillic characters, characters with accent marks, or characters used in non-English languages such as ñ.

To add support for international characters:

1. Open the devenv.exe.config file in your Visual Studio installation directory.
2. Add the following text:
   
   <configuration>
       <configSections>
           <section
               name="uri"
               type="System.Configuration.UriSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0,
               Culture=neutral,
               PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
       </configSections>
       <uri>
           <idn enabled="All" />
           <iriParsing enabled="true" />
       </uri>
   </configuration>
3. Save and close the devenv.exe.config file.

Be aware that there are side effects to changing the above configuration file. For more information, please refer to the NVIDIA forums:

http://forums.developer.nvidia.com/