Digital cameras 101

[fARNO]

I've had my Sony DSC-P9 Cybershot for four years now almost five. I've never had any trouble with it in the past, but i recently had to buy a new hard drive for my PC.
I run windows XP with service pack 2.
My Problems is this. I have installed the drivers off the disk and restarted the PC as it says. Then i plug the camera into the USB port [I've tried every USB port on the PC] The PC Pings to say its found the camera but almost immediately pings again to say its disconnected  
So i looked in the device manager and found that the camera is registered on the system but the drive was not. I look in the driver files and its there. I have removed the files via add/remove software and tried a few times also downloaded files of the next in case the disk is corrupt. I'm up to the point now where the system is saying the driver file is 'Bad data' and wont run it. Any ideas?
Might have to get a card reader. Any comment welcome.

[ShutterbugGail]

Hi Farno,

Welcome to the Q&A Board.

I'm very sorry to hear about the problems you've been having!  I don't rightly know what to advise since it sounds like you're dealing with a compter hardware problem/conflict rather than a digital camera problem. Unforntunately, we are not really geared at this board to handle those types of questions.

Saying that, let me think out loud and offer some thoughts as to what I might try if I was in your position.

Have you called the manufacturer of the new hard drive to inquire what might be the problem? I'm assuming you installed it yourself but, if you did not, I'd certainly call the person who did.

My next step would be to go out and get a memory card reader. I got six-card reader for under $20 U.S. and it works like a charm. Most importantly, it doesn't require any driver with Windows ME and above. Another advantage is that you won't be draining precious battery power used when tranfering images from camera to computer.

If all else fails, before calling Sony or Microsoft and possibly incurring a service charge, I encourage you to visit the Sony digital camera forums at dpreview.  Since it consists of Sony digicam users, I bet there will be someone there who's experienced the same and can help:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1009

Hope you'll find a moment to let us know how it worked out when the problem is finally resolved.

[Neil F]

I found the problem to be service pack 2. I removed it and it came back on

[ShutterbugGail]

I found the problem to be service pack 2. I removed it and it came back on

Now that's interesting. Glad you solved the problem. Thanks so much for sharing the info with others!