the end of a journey

After many, many hours over a period of 2 months of trying to connect my camera to my computer, I finally found a solution!

[2.15.05] After my Valentine's Day dinner with Martha, I tried connecting my camera to my new laptop for the first time. No dice. Decided that I really didn't need pictures on my blog anyhow.

[2.21.05] Tried posting pictures online for some furniture that I was selling on Craigslist. Ran into the same issue as before. Upon some research, I found that there was a known issue with Win XP recognizing Canon PowerShot S-line cameras.

[2.21.05] Followed instructions on Microsoft's KB site to try and get my camera recognized. Several times. It still didn't work.

At first, it would recognize my device ("USB Hardware detected") but not the driver. Reinstalled the driver and rebooted my computer. Then, it would recognize that I plugged a USB device in, but not that there was hardware attached to it.

I then tried to add the camera manually to the list of imaging devices. It didn't show up on the list of devices, even after I installed the driver - again. I then tried to manually select the driver, but it wouldn't select the file, even though it recognized it.

I gave up.

[3.26.05] I decided to complete avoid the whole Win XP issue (I tried again several times between Feb and Mar) and upload my files on Heather's Mac. Unfortunately, her OS X had crashed, and iPhoto doesn't come on OS 9. So I tried installing the driver for the computer directly from Canon's site, which, incidentally is the most unhelpful place I've ever been to.

Driver downloaded, installed, computer rebooted - great. The Finder gives me a message that "Image Browser software is missing." Why it is missing, I don't know. I didn't even realize that Image Browser was a separate app from the driver. So I unistall the driver, reinstall the driver, also add the Canon plug in to the Photoshop app folder, as well as all of the camera extensions into the Extensions folder.

When I plug it in, it just doesn't do anything. No Image Browser software missing message this time.

I try to find Image Browser via Google, but all I get are upgrades to Image Browser - in Italian! The Canon site only has the upgrade, not the actually program - presumably because it is included in the original .sit file. Well, its not. I even went so far as to install the upgrade, but of course it can't upgrade software that doesn't exist.

At this point, I'm on the verge of giving up, but I do one more thing: I call Nathan. And he says, "Duh, why don't you just buy a USB compact flash card reader?" Duh.

[3.27.05] I head over to Fry's (which I HATE HATE HATE and am only going to out of sheer desperation) and pick up a USB CF reader for a mere $12.99. Wonderful, great. The first time I plug it in with my flash card, it opens it up, takes me to a folder called DCIM/110Canon. Still good. Images are there - even better. Except for the fact that I can't read the images! They are jpeg files, but they're not readable by Windows Picture Viewer, Photoshop, Ofoto software, or IE.

I ping Nathan again:

serena: HELP!
nathan: wha?
serena: i got the cf reader thingy
nathan: but...
serena: but it only gives me pictures that i can't read!
nathan: what file are you in?
serena: DCIM > 110Canon
nathan: hmmm...
serena: totally bizarre but i think i solved my problem
nathan: ?
serena: i started clicking around
serena: and found my pictures
serena: they're in the nikon folder
nathan: wtf?

"WTF" pretty much sums up my entire experience. But now, its finally working - that's all I care about! So look for some back-dated posts for this weekend coming up soon. For now, I've got to go and put my head through a wall.