3ds max 7 problems with FO3 .nif files

[blasph23]

I've been trying to modify some of the Fallout 3 original .nif files, static objects only, but I have some problems with it under 3ds max 7. Mainly,I get all kinds of different errors whenever I try to import a file extracted from a .bsa archive. I've read somewhere around this site that I need niftools and nifskope, so I got these. I can view the meshes in nifskope with no problems but I don't know that program and I don't feel like learning it from the scratch, especially when I had a lot of personal mods made for Oblivion using 3ds max, so I am familiar with it much more. Is there something I'm doing wrong here, maybe some improper addons or other settings within 3ds? Here's a bunch of errors I'm getting on importing nif files:

 

Unknown object type encountered during file read: BSFadeNode

No objects were read successfully.

 

or a different one:

vector <T> too long

 

or this one:

 

End of file reached prematurely. This NIF might be corrupt or improperly supported

 

Again, all of the files that gave me this error had no problems under nifskope.

Any idea what can be wrong or what I'm doing wrong/what part of updating my 3ds have I screwed up?

I searched around this forum and site but found no other people experiencing similar issues; I've seen some guides and faq's but nothing that covered 3ds max problems in more detail. Any help would be appreciated.

[jaysus]

read the sticky bout modelling... you use the wrong importer... use 3.1

3.0 only for export