New (2nd) CF Card Can Not Read On The PC

[chuck_c_charlottenc_]

I have a problem that I hope someone can shed some light on. I own

a 20d and I bought another SanDisk 1GB CF cardﾅ this time an Ultra

II. My existing 1GB card has a number of folders on it because Iﾒve

taken over 700 pictures but have never formatted itﾅ Iﾒve copied the

pictures to the PC each time the card was full and then deleted

many of the pictures on the card, one by one. I didnﾒt want to

delete them all because I wanted a select few to be left on the card

for later chimping with friends. I don't think this information is

important, but I thought I'd include it.

 

Well, today I put the new Ultra II card in the 20d, formatted the

card in the camera and started taking pictures. Later in the day I

took the card out, put it in the PCﾒs card reader to copy the

pictures and Windows Explorer would not display the JPGs. When I

click on each JPG I get a ﾓNo Preview Availableﾔ in the Window

Explorer box.

 

I then clicked on the CR2 files and PS CS2 says ﾓCould Not Completeﾅ

because itﾒs not the right type of documentﾔ. I removed the new

card and inserted my old 1GB CF card and everything is fine with

both Windows Explorer and PS CS2. I even took additional pictures

on the old card and tried again and it worked OK. I then formatted

the new card took a number of test pictures, brought the card to the

PC and it failed in the same way as I described earlier.

 

There seems to be something missing on the new card but I can't

figure it out.

 

By the Way, the pictures are viewable from the new card on the 20d.

 

If anyone has seen this or if anyone has any ideas of what I might

try next, I would appreciate the help.

 

Thanks.

 

//Chuck

[conraderb]

Definitely get the card exchanged for another one.

 

I have no idea why it's happening, but that shouldn't be happening.

 

Out of the 9 1 gig cards I have purchased in the past year, one was bad :-( It had slightly different symptoms, but I had it replaced two days later.

[chuck_c_charlottenc_]

I've done some more testing with this new CF card. I inserted the card into the card reader, marked all the pictures and tried to paste them to a new folder on my hard drive. I immediately got a message from Windows Explorer - "BIG RED X - Cannot Copy _MG_0775: The Parameter Is Incorrect". I also tried one JPG; same result and one CR2; same result.

 

I haven't tried connecting the camera itself to the PC and trying to read the card through the camera. But, even if that works I don't know what it will tell me... and it's totally unacceptable because I'm not going to connect up the camera every time I want to copy pictures.

 

As Conrad said: Take it back. No wonder it was a great deal at CompUSA on Thanksgiving weekend... They may have a bad batch of them that have sporadic problems.

 

Thanks.

 

//Chuck

[flirtynfun]

Have you considered that maybe your card reader may be malfunctioning? Maybe a friend has a computer you can try it on...or just try once to send the files to the PC via USB. Try several variables to determine for SURE it's the CF card. Two CF cards in a row being bad are not really common in my eyes.

[lespaton]

How about this....

 

http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos20d/eos20d_firmware-e.html

 

...see item 2 in the fix.

[jim_gross]

My old card reader 6 in 1 would not read the new Sony memory stick as it was a new format. Is it possible the Ultra II card is a new format and your card reader is not reading it.

 

Try to down load from the camera and see if the files are good.

 

Jim

[wolfphotos]

I don't think this is the answer, my opinion is the cards faulty, but I have heard of a few people having problems with the microsoft RAW picture viewer. I had a few problems with it, myself, tagging images it had opened making it impossible to view or manipulate them. In the end I just uninstalled the windows viewer and everything was fine.

[chuck_c_charlottenc_]

I've done some leg work on this problem this morning. Here's the scoop. I went to CompUSA to potentially return the new Ultra II card. I decided to talk to one of the sales associates that has a good overall knowledge of technology and he suggested let's try it in one of our PCs. And, IT WORKED! I then said to him and myself now what am I going to do? He asked me about my card reader and I told him that it was a SanDisk, but many years old, probably at least 5 years old. I bought it when the only two prominent cards were the Smart Media and the Compact Flash.

He suggested that I buy a newer card reader, try it, and if it still don't read the card, bring them both back for a refund. That seemed more than fair to me.

 

At home I unplugged the old card reader, plugged in the new one and booted up. Windows XP installed it with no problem and I stuck the new Ultra II card in and it WORKS!

 

So, this should teach us all a lesson... there's plenty of incompatibilities out there.

 

My old card reader is a SanDisk ImageMate model No. SDDR-75.

 

It's hard to believe that my 1st card bought about 7 months, a 1GB SanDisk Extreme III works fine with the old card reader, but the Ultra II bought last week is incompatible.

 

A note to Mike North... I didn't have two cards fail me, just the lastest Ultra II card.

 

So, I'm a happy camper again.

 

Thanks to everyone who supplied the thoughts and help.

 

Now I'm about to stick my old CF card in the new card reader and I hope not to add another line to this post.

 

//Chuck