wbarbourca said:
This thread is starting to become confusing. There are at least 3
people here who have reported problems:
tewkes
(e-mail address removed)
wbarbourca
I believe that we have to take care to identify who we're responding,
to as questions and suggestions for the problem descriptions stated are
starting to get 'blended'.
It has got quite confusing. I was replying to the post I was quoting,
which seemed to be stating that USB 1 and 2 are incompatible. This is
not the case, and I was trying to clarify that (and explain a bit more
for anyone technically minded who is interested).
In reply to Tewkes:
It doesn't matter how old the camera is. If it doesn't explicitly say
'Vista compatible', then we can't assume it is. It may have been tested
only against older OSs.
If someone can tell me that they have no problem interconnecting a 2003
Sony DSC-V1 camera or a 2003 Poketec Datastor 40G external drive with
the original firmware and drivers to Vista via USB to transfer or
display pictures, then that would blow 'my' hypothesis right out of the
water.
That wouldn't necessarily blow your hypothesis out of the water. Older
hardware may be compatible with Vista, even if it hasn't been tested.
I'd expect any disk drive or other storage device which fully complies
with the "USB Mass Storage" standard to work with Vista without
modification, since both Vista AND the device should be compliant with
that common standard. That's not to say any storage device which worked
on XP WILL work on Vista - it's possible that the device is not actually
quite compliant with the standard due to bugs which XP ignores but Vista
doesn't.
Both of these units are now discontinued, so I would consider
myself to be lucky if anyone bothered to rewrite the firmware.
In your case, if your camera is still on the market, then there's hope.
And yes, everyone who has your camera 'should' have the same problem
with Vista if my theory holds true.
I'm not sure who was having problems with several devices (as you say,
this thread has become a bit confused), but for that person / those
people, it is POSSIBLE that the problem is with your USB controller in
the PC, or the Vista drivers for that controller. I've suggested a few
things to try below to help track down where the problem is. Apologies
if they are not all relevant to the same person, or if you have already
tried some of them! I realise some of them require resources that not
everyone has access to (another computer - maybe try using a friend's
computer, especially if they have Vista, if you don't have one; spare
USB controller - you might know someone with one lying around, but
they're usually on-board these days), or you might need to find someone
with more technical knowledge to help with some of them (I hope none of
you actually know me.....! ;o) ), so just try what you can.
- try the troublesome devices on another (preferably Vista) computer and
see if you can reproduce the results there. I don't just mean open the
corrupt files there and see that they are still corrupt - if they are
already corrupt they will stay that way. I mean take new photos, check
that they transfer correctly to the second computer, copy to the
external hard disk (using the second computer), check that they still
open correctly. If you have good copies on the external drive, try
opening them on the troublesome computer and see if they display
correctly there. Try copying some to the troublesome computer's hard
disk, view them from there, rename, and copy back to the USB disk. Have
the copies become corrupt? If you don't have access to another computer
with Vista, one with another OS will still help, but if everything works
fine on that machine it still leaves the computer's hardware and the OS
as potential problems, rather than just the hardware. The aim is to try
changing one thing at a time, so it is preferable not to change the
computer hardware and the OS at the same time.
- try copying other files apart from just pictures to the external
drive. Do they also get corrupted?
- see if any other USB devices apart from storage devices exhibit
strange behaviour. Many digital cameras act as a storage device for the
purpose of transferring photos, so if you have a general problem with
storage devices this could affect the camera as well as USB disk drives
and card readers. If you find that mice, keyboards, and other low speed
devices have no problem, but that all high-speed devices (marked with a
"USB High Speed" logo) do have problems, it is more likely to be down to
a faulty controller, or the driver for the controller - I have
experienced this in the past, although the devices usually do not work
at all rather than appearing to work but corrupting data.
- try putting another USB 2 controller in your malfunctioning computer,
ie. USB PCI card in a PC, or USB PCMCIA/Cardbus card in a laptop. I'm
not suggesting you buy one just for troubleshooting unless you are more
certain that the controller is the problem, but try to borrow one if you
don't happen to have one lying around. If that fixes the problem, you
probably have a faulty USB controller. Either send the computer back for
repair if it is still under warranty, keep the spare USB controller you
put in if it's not needed elsewhere, buy a new USB controller if not
(they cost about £10-£20 here in the UK), or consider paying for it to
be repaired (probably more expensive than just buying a new controller!)
- try with a different operating system on the malfunctioning computer,
eg. download a "Live" Linux CD (eg. Knoppix) and boot from that - doing
so allows you to run Linux without installing it on the hard disk. I
suggest using a "Live" CD because installing another OS onto the hard
disk over the top of Vista would require making a backup of any data you
don't want to lose, and I wouldn't trust a backup given the problem
you're investigating! It also saves the hassle of actually installing
another OS and reinstalling Vista later. You may need to find someone
else who's familiar with Linux to help you here. I'm not suggesting
using Linux as a permanent solution, but I do find it very useful in
eliminating the OS as the cause of a problem. If you still get problems
under the alternative OS, then the OS is very unlikely to be the cause,
and it is likely a hardware problem. If you don't have problems in the
alternative OS, it could be that there is a problem with the Vista
drivers for either the USB controller or affected hardware.
- I wonder if all the people posting here with problems have computers
from the same manufacturer, or at least using the same motherboard or
on-board USB controller...?
As I say, I believe that it 'may' be more likely that it is the camera
manufacture who needs to upgrade their firmware and drivers to be Vista
compatible.
Apologies for the long list of things to try. I hope it helps at least
some of you work out where the problem lies.
Mark.
