How to get my photos off my camera?

June 8, 2008 9:41 AM

Why can't my laptop get my photos off my camera? I have a Canon Powershot TX1, and all of a sudden, my laptop stopped "seeing" the photos on it. When I plug the camera into my (windows xp OS) laptop using a usb cable, it recognizes the camera, but just hangs and shows no data on the drive.

More info: The card (cards -- I've tried both) is fine -- I've been able to access the photos using a card reader, but the laptop just does not want to read the card via the camera. The laptop "sees" the camera itself, but when I go to open the camera using win explorer, the hourglass pops up and then nothing happens. Thoughts?

posted by kilikina73 to Technology (4 answers total)

Try a different USB cable. I've had this exact problem happen before with my Powershot G3 - I wasn't able to download using my XP desktop, but when I used my Ubuntu laptop, it worked fine. I futzed around for a half a day with drivers & USB settings until I realized that I was using two different USB cables on the two machines.

I swapped the two cables, and the XP box was able to download, and the Ubuntu machine was not.
posted by deadmessenger at 10:45 AM on June 8, 2008

get an SD card reader. they're cheap and it will make your life easier.
posted by gnutron at 5:33 PM on June 8, 2008

Doesn't the photo download depend on Canon software residing on your laptop? I'd try un-installing and re-installing that software.

And seconding the SD card reader. I prefer that to the USB cable thing myelf. However, you do have to remove the card from the camera and plug it into the reader, then put it back into the camera.
posted by exphysicist345 at 7:16 PM on June 8, 2008

Make sure your camera is in a PTP USB mode. If the USB mode is set to print directly to a printer or is set to an AV output mode, Windows won't know to mount it as a drive.
posted by tmt at 9:30 PM on June 8, 2008