XP not recognizing camera

June 5, 2005 4:07 PM

My mom's XP Home (on a Dell laptop) won't recognize her Minolta Dimage XT camera anymore. She's at wit's end, and I'm nowhere near to play around with it. She replaced the driver and double-checked the cable connections. Still no luck Can you give any troubleshooting suggestions?
posted by found missing to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You can try unpluging the camera, go into control panel --> add/remove programs and remove the USB device driver for the camera (in my case, it's called "Pentax USB Disk Device").

Plug the camera back in, turn it on, and Windows should search for the right driver and install it again (you might need to have the CD that came with the camera in the drive).

Good luck.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 4:27 PM on June 5, 2005

Thanks my colorful marine friend. I had her try that just now. Weirdly, Windows did not realize that there was an unknown device attached. And, it therefore did not start searching for the driver.
posted by found missing at 7:27 PM on June 5, 2005

So... no love?

You could try unplugging the cam, maybe try re-installing the driver manually (from the install CD) - some installs ask you to plug the device in after a software/driver install.

Another thing to try would be to plug the camera into a computer that hasn't seen that camera (or a camera of that model) before to see if it'll recognize a new device. It could be a problem with the camera itself. I'm sure you've ejected and re-inserted the memory card - hmmm, maybe plug the cam in without the memory card (if it has some internal memory, which it should)?

I've had similar problems with my PDA and it's memory stick. I think it might be a problem of unplugging it and then having WinXP not knowing that it's unplugged so the next time it's plugged in... ?? XP doesn't see it because it's looking somewhere else.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 7:47 PM on June 5, 2005

Oh yeah - is she plugging it in into the same USB port? Try other plugs, if available. If she has a spare cable handy (especially if the one she's using has some kinks in it) it'd be a good idea to the other one instead.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:00 PM on June 5, 2005

I've had exactly the same problem with my Canon A95. Still sorting it out. Haven't tested it with the other Canon, possibly part of the problem is we're a 2-Canon family.
posted by Goofyy at 12:55 AM on June 6, 2005

Here's the followup and resolution: She bought a ScanDisk ImageMate USB 2.0 Reader/Writer. It didn't cost much more than a new cable. She pops the memory disk into that baby, and can quickly upload to the computer. So, it might have been a bad cable, as PurplePorpoise suggested, but for now we do not know. Anyway, problem solved, mother happy; son can move on to other things.
posted by found missing at 12:47 PM on June 12, 2005