USB storage device & digital camera problems

[John Smith]

Running XP sp2 on an IBM Thinkpad A31p, and having problems connecting a
digital camera to the USB ports.

The machine has two USB 1.1 ports both of which seem to work fine as I can
run a USB mouse off either.

A couple of days ago I bought a digital still camera. The camera uses
CompactFlash memory cards, and has a USB port and cable for transferring
photos to the computer.

I can copy photos from the CompactFlash card to the computer, but I can't
copy anything from the computer to the CF card (I need to do that as there's
a firmware upgrade for the camera). The device shows as a digital camera in
Windows Explorer, but I'm not able to copy to it.

I was advised to buy a USB CF card reader which I did today. The device is
recognized by Windows, but Explorer doesn't give it a drive letter, so I
can't copy to or from it.

I'm stumped. The USB ports word, but two separate devices which should have
been recognized by Windows and given drive letters were not recognized.

Help!?!

 

[John Smith]

I stumped the Windows crew, but the Nikon crew came through -- even though
it was a Windows issue!

I'd been under the (mis)apprehension that when you attached a new removable
media device, Windows would give it the next available drive letter. And so
it does -- the next drive letter on the local machine. If you've got any
network mappings with that letter, they're toast. No warning from Windows,
just gone.