Plug and Play not working, can't d/l pictures fr. camera. Help?
 

OK, I've gone throuh the troubleshooting with Canon far enough to figure out that the Plug and Play is not working for me: when I look in the Scanners and Cameras folder of my Control Panel, it's empty. Now I've had this camera for many years, and it just now won't d/l. Usually I plug it into the USB hub and a camera wizard or something like program opens, and I have to select D/L pictures. No more: the selection window opens, but there are no options to select.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot the Plug and Play (the only reason I know how to categorize this issue is because of Canon's fine customer service). And my system was built years ago by my now-ex, whom under no circumstances will I ask for help. So I don't have a company to call for assistance.

Can you guys here help me? Thanks!!

I'll get the stupidest question out of the way - you have turned the camera on haven't you? (otherwise it won't show up)...

Plug in the camera and then follow the instructions here to access the device manager: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...devicemgr.mspx

Click on the + signs on the right and look for any entries that may name your camera. With those, follow the "status of the device" instructions and paste any info from the troubleshooting box here.

I'll follow up with the next stupidest question - you've tried it in more than one USB port, right?

It's possible to manually add devices when Plug and Pray fails, but we'll handle the easy troubleshooting before we get into that.

ALrighty then.

Yes the camera is on. So is the computer, by the way. :P
Yes the camera is plugged into the port (and have tried multiple ports).
Yes I've gone through the Device Manager.

The computer sees the camera, the hardware is fine. The software is what's messed up, the Plug and Play "connection".

Plug and Pray, hahaha Matian!

I've done this for years with this camera. Bah.

Had a IT professional friend come over to troubleshoot, no progress.

I am going to get another camera. This one is old, been planning on replacing it for a long time now. It's just a few months ahead of schedule. Gonna get the Canon Powershot A57OIS 7.1.

Thanks though, guys.

Wait, you can see the camera in My Computer? If you can, then Windows will almost certainly be able to treat the camera like an external device. I have never ever used software that comes with cameras of any kind. It if requires software, I don't buy it.

Ditto what Augi said. The software is just another layer of silliness for the most part. Just open that bad boy up from My Computer and pull the pics from the DCIM folder.

Hmmm, secondarily, do other plug and play devices work? If your mouse is USB and you can unplug and plug it back in and have Windows recognize it, your PnP is working fine. Generally, Plug and Play, as a system, can't really break, and it certainly cannot selectively break (ie - using the test above). If a driver goes out, most modern USB devices would cease to exist on your PC as they are pretty much all PnP. Could be a bad cable (PWR+GND will trip detection on some devices, but bad DATA will not allow an actual connection).

Okay, I reread your last post. If the computer sees the camera (does it recognize it including model?) then PnP is not the problem. Plug and Play is a transparent background service in Windows that offers information about connected devices to other applications (and to Windows itself).

• If the Camera shows up in Device Manager as "Canon Model xxxx" then PnP is working as intended.
• If it shows up as "Unknown Device" then there is a driver problem (driver was corrupted at some point, try system restore from recent backup?).
• If it shows up as a gibberish device, then there is a firemware issue with the camera.
• If the camera does NOT show up, then there is either a camera hardware problem, a cable issue or an actual PnP issue with Windows (try an XP reinstall).

Good luck!

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...wnloadIndexAct
Use that page to get your camera's driver. This really should be fixable.

Thanks all, I really appreciate your help. But this is a PC issue, not a camera issue--there is no driver nor software.

I'm going to get a card reader rather than a new camera, as I will encounter the same issue with any other Canon (a friend brought his over, same prob). A card reader will skirt the issue. I'd rather fix it of course, but none of my IT nor photographer friends have been able to help, and I've spent hours on this already.

Thanks again. :)

I dont know if this applies, but on my computer at work, for whatever reason, I always have to rename the usb port to a different drive letter. When plugged in it tries to show as F drive....because of our work network, F drive is my local network drive and the conflict so I right click on my computer click on manage and then click on removable storage and rename the drive letter and it works fine

something similar with my external harddrive. i have to "activate it each time i use it so run a script that automates it each time i restart windoze.

diskpart /s c:\windows\online.txt

online.txt:

select disk 1
online

perhaps just play around with the diskpart command and see what happens. i do wonder if something is corrupted as it doesn´t sound healthy that it did work and now doesn´t. what´s next?

Sultana,

That's an interesting issue. You don't actually NEED Canon drivers to access the Canon camera though (I'm positive of that with XPSP2 or Vista at least). However, a card reader is definitely the way to go anyhow. You save a ton of battery power and generally a decent reader will transfer pictures faster than your camera.

Good luck!

I would go for the card-reader option especially since you have spent serious time on this already.
I have a Canon camera but I always use a card-reader as that doesn't drain the batteries (have you checked them ?) the Canon software dectects when I insert the card and gives me the same options on transfering as if I connected the camera.

ZB

Card reader is my recomendation as well. Like Zweiblumen said, it just drains batteries. It also ties up your camera.

I think it might be an update issue. Try updating your computer (Windows Updare) and looking for hardware updates that deal USB drivers...

Windows did not always have drivers for plug and play cameras.