Canon 300d won't talk to PC (XP)

I have just got myself a Canon 300d (digital rebel). In the process of
loading the bundled software, the installation of the cd software seemed to
go fine - but when i restarted the computer and plugged in the camera
itself to the usb port, the Found New Hardware message came up with 'Canon
Digital Camera' but an error box keeps coming up saying "Windows could not
load the installer for Image". I tried deleting the drivers and
reinstalling, but same problem. Is there any way I can get my camera to
talk to the PC without a card reader? I am using windows XP.

 

does canon have a help number or email address?

 

not a local one that came with the camera, but i'm trying to hunt one up...

 

On user manual page W-14, have you try to set your camera Communication to
"Normal" instead of "PTP"?
I had problem with photos transfer when I set to PTP, I'm using Windows XP
as well.
Good Luck

JL

 

yep - tried to connect while set in both modes, but got the same message
though.

 

Have you got any other Imaging devices (e.g. a flatbed scanner)
plugged in via USB ?

I couldn't get my 300d to be recognised by Windows XP until I
unplugged my Mustek USB scanner. I didn't need to uninstall anything -
I just physically disconnected the scanner from the PC and everything
was OK.

Both work fine now, but I can't have them plugged in at the same time.

It seems the Mustek scanner driver takes over and doesn't allow the OS
to see the camera.

 

Buy a Pentax *istD. XP sees it as an USB disk drive. No need for drivers

 

i think canon has a website?
it might have a help number.

it did when I needed it.

 

Don't bother with connecting the camera to the PC, get a card reader
instead. The 300D (i have one) uses usb 1.1, and is deadly slow
downloading images. A usb 2.0 card reader is not expensive and
downloads a lot faster.

Colin

 

It took me 2 hours to download 373 jpeg large photos from 300D to PC.
Anyone know how much time can be save if I use USB 2.0 card reader to do
those download?
Thanks
JL

 

373 images is probably going to take a couple of minutes or so. The
limiting factor when changing from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0 is the speed at
which data can be read from the card, and written to the HD on your
computer. IIRC, about 6 - 10 mb/s from a compact flash card is typical.

 

aOn Sun, 01 May 2005 20:45:43 +1200, Frederick

a firewire cf card reader would be a lot faster
http://www.sandisk.com/retail/ultra-firewire.asp

 

I think your problem may be somewhere else. I have a USB 1.1 interface
on my PC and it takes less than 15 minutes to unload a 1 GB card (in
camera) when it is nearly full.

Cheers,
Alan.

 

Correction. I just uploaded 1 GB from my camera via USB 1.1.
8 minutes. (81 JPG / 81 RAW / 81 THM).

Cheers,
Alan

 

Would it?
I haven't tried - but USB 2.0 speed is 480 mb/s - about 50 times faster
than the data can be read from the card. The bottleneck isn't the the
theoretical transfer speed of the bus.

 

Alan Browne wrote:
[]

That exceeds the raw data rate of USB 1.1 (16Mb/s versus 12Mb/s).

David

 

Frederick wrote:
[]

SanDisk SD Ultra II card - read speed 10MB/s (bytes/second) or 80Mb/s
(bits/second)

That make the USB 2.0 hi-speed interface (480MB/s) just 6 times faster,
not 50 times.

David

 

Good lord. (I confused my bits and bytes)
That means that if Moore's law keeps up (for flash card read/write
speeds), in a few years a firewire card reader will be faster than USB
2.0 , and the OP will be correct.

 

USB2 does not have a guaranteed sustined rate.

IEEE1394 ( firewire/ilink ) does. It has to due to it's requirement to
handle dv footage which must be constant and fixed rate.

1GB over firewire would take approx 1hr/13 = less than 5 minutes.

 

I realize that and I was surprised myself. But

1) the card was full (a couple hundred K short of 1 GB) and,
2) it took a little less than 8 minutes to upload and,
3) the USB on my computer is most definitely 1.1.

I don't know if compression is possible in this case? (Using XP, seeing
the camera CF memory as a mounted drive).

Cheers,
Alan