Getting my R817 camera working again

[lynn stein]

I had everything working fine on my computer running Windows 98SE until my registry messed up.

I had to reinstall my HP printer software and it went perfectly. Installing the camera is another matter. The software installs without any error messages, yet my camera will not work any more.

What I mean is that, before the registry troubles, I would plug in my camera and immediately the software would run and I could upload my pictures to my computer. This doesn't happen any more. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it 2 dozen times. The closest I've managed to get to fixing it is to configure my camera as a disk drive and then everything works fine.

However, that's beside the point. The point is that it worked once. Why can't I get it to work again?

Can anyone help? This is driving me nuts.

[Charlie O.]

I don't know much about your computer problem but with my R817 I take out the SD chip and put it in the computer with either a mini USB reader or directly into the SD slot on the desktop. Windows 98 may not have these features.

[lynn stein]

Quote:

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I don't know much about your computer problem but with my R817 I take out the SD chip and put it in the computer with either a mini USB reader or directly into the SD slot on the desktop. Windows 98 may not have these features.

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No, my system is fairly basic. It's just so frustrating that it worked before, and now, it seems even HP themselves don't have the foggiest idea how to fix their own product.

[James M. Prange (Michigan)]

Have you tried asking anyone at HP itself?

Regards,
James

[lynn stein]

Quote:

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Have you tried asking anyone at HP itself?

Regards,
James

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Of course. I've been communicating with their support for two weeks, but it's like talking to a robot. It's nothing more than a repeat of pre-packaged answers. No real help.

My last reply was for instructions to uninstall and reinstall the software.....for Windows XP, even though I made it clear this is a Windows 98 computer.

[Vassilis Prevelakis]

lynn stein wrote:

> It's just so frustrating that it worked before, and now, it seems even HP themselves don't 

> have the foggiest idea howto fix their own product. 

A few points:

a) The problem is with Windows. Windows is not an HP product, so the best HP support can do it to give you some general tips. Eventually they will tell you to reinstall everything (including Windows). While this may appear drastic, it will get things working again.

b) This forum is not about HP cameras, or Windows. It is about HP calculators. I am not brushing you off, but be aware, that another forum may be more appropriate (and hence helpful) to you.

c) Your problem appears to be that Windows has somehow recognized the camera (associated some default driver with it) and is not loading the HP software to access it. So you end up with the camera appearing as a simple USB hard drive.

Now I know zip about this camera, but it may be helpful to open the device manager and check to see if the camera appears there. It may actually appear with a ? next to it indicating that Windows did not load the correct driver for it. So, make sure its really the camera entry and if so, delete it! Then exit the device manager, and reboot. Once the system is up, connect the camera and observe what the system is telling you. It may ask for a diskette or CDROM etc.
Use the HP driver disk and hope that its there.

Alternatively, unistall the HP software, and check the device manager to remove any entry with the name of the camera. Then read the installation instructions of the HP camera software. Does the software have to be installed before, or after you connect the camera. Getting this wrong is probably what got you into this mess in the 1st place.

If this does not work, then you need someone with stronger zuzu than me, or you can just reinstall Windows and get it over with.

**vp

[Jeff Brower]

You mention a registry problem, so it may help to get the registry cleaned up with some software that specializes in that. There's a freeware program called regseeker that has worked well for me, as with all things windows related your milage may vary.

As another poster mentioned if you've not reinstalled win98 in several years then it's time to do that, it will feel like it runs faster without all that old unused software in there bogging things down.