My Nikon won't let me download pictures to my laptop?

I have a Nikon J1 and I followed the instructions for downloading pictures onto your computer. So I hooked it up to my laptop and turned my camera on as it said to do in the manual book thing but it turns on for a second and a gray box pops up and then the screen goes black. Can someone please help me?

Until you figure it out, just put the camera's memory card in the computer's card reader slot of the right size and reference it like an external drive. Only format the card in the camera itself though.

You might need to install the nikon software.

When you can, go buy a memory card reader. You just plug it into a USB port on your laptop, and then insert the card into the reader. Much easier and faster to upload your pictures. And it doesn't run down the batteries in your camera. The readers are sold in most stores that sell cameras.

Does your laptop have a card slot? If so, use that instead.