Scanner and Camera Wizard Not working

[Guest]

When I plug in my camera into a USB port, the Scanner and Camera wizard,
which used to run, no longer runs, instead an explorer box pops up with the
folder(s) on the memory stick. I can browse the memory stick, also. When I
try to manually run the scanner and camera wizard, it tells me it cannot
recognize the scanner or camera. Again, this was working, suddently it
stopped. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, MC.

Different cameras work differently. What is the make and model of yours?
Did it come with proprietary software?

Have you used Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc at the Run prompt)? This
built-in WinXP utility handles much more than disk drives, including many
types of USB flash drives, memory card readers - and some cameras. Anything
that can be assigned a "drive" letter.

If your camera shows up here, you can assign it a specific drive letter of
your choice (S: for Scanner?). Then WinXP will attempt to assign that same
letter each time you plug in that camera. If you don't specifically assign
a letter, then WinXP will apply its default rules to assign "the next
available" letter each time you plug it in, and this can vary, depending on
what else is plugged in and enabled at the time, so your camera might be F:
today and G: tomorrow.

If you right-click on the camera in Disk Management, then click Properties,
you should see a screen with several tabs including one for Policies. On
this tab, you should have a choice between Optimize for performance and
Optimize for quick removal. See what happens if you change this option.

Once installed, with a "permanent" drive letter, your camera should "just
work", without the need to run the wizard again each time it is
re-connected.

RC

 

[David Kelsey]

I have a similar problem - until a few days ago, the Scanner and Camera
Wizard came up automatically and enabled me to download files from my
Olympus. It has done this regularly for a year or two, and only stopped
doing so very recently. This is not the Scanner and Camera Installation
Wizard, which you only use when installing the camera, and of course it
should come up whenever you want to download pictures to your computer. I
suspect it may have been trashed by the latest round of XP updates or the
WIA software. As it is apparently affecting a number of people on various
forums, I hope MS can suggest a solution if it is indeed the updates.

David Kelsey