USB mass storage not working for camera / mp3 player

Hi all,

I've been trawling for ages with no luck on this problem - please help!

If I plug my camera (minolta z3) into any USB port on my XP Home SP2 computer, it will install and appear in device manager no probs. However, it does not appear as a drive in My Computer or Explorer so i cant read or write to the memory. All other USB pheriphals work ok : USB mouse / modem multicard reader / joystick / wheel / webcam ! If I boot windows into safemode (with networking), the camera appears as a drive in explorer and works perfectly...

If I remove all other usb devices apart from the camera, I still get the same problem. I've flashed my BIOS, updated my motherboard chipset drivers and got all the lastest stuff from windows update. Oh, and the camera works fine on my Win98 computer.This is driving me nuts!!

Other posts suggest that looking at drive assignments in Disk Management will help but Disk management freezes if the camera is plugged in.

I have a similar (and possibly linked) problem with my mp3 player, but this causes my PC to crash completely with an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. Again it works fine and appears as a mass storage device while running in safemode and on my Win98 machine. Incidentally, the camera also caused this BSOD crash until I updated the bios...

Anyway, I feel better already from having shared this grief! Any suggestions / help will be gratefully appreciated.. thanks all!

rob

PS/ this guy had almost exactly the same problem with his mp3 but I cant get in touch with him to find out if it was resolved :
http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=56526

Is there nobody out there with the answer to my query?? I am getting a bit miffed at not being able to use my shiny new beast for things that worked on my old faithful... have i made progress??
cheers
Rob

I've just installed xp and upgraded to sp2 on an asus p5p400. When I started my cardreaders and external USB drive (i.e USB mass storage) were working perfectly. Somewhere along the line that changed. I don't know if the SP2 upgrade caused them to stop working or what. I'm working on the problem tonight when I get home. The one datapoint I can offer is that its a problem with USB mass storage devices. Try Googleing on that. Keep me updated if you find a fix, I'll do the same.

Also, looks like this thread is the same issue.

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=65919

cheers,
-scott

Hi Robbie, not sure if this will help but do try:

When the camera is plugged in, right click 'My Computer' and click 'Manage'. Look under 'Storage' and click 'Disk Management'. Both your multicard reader and the camera's drive should be there, right-click on the camera's drive and click 'Assign new drive-letter'. See what drive-letters are in use on your pc and change the camera's to an unassigned one.

Let me know if it works.

Sorry Robbie, just reread your post and only then noticed Disk management problem you also have. Only other suggestion I have is to take the cam to somebody else's xp/win2k pc (prefrebaly with only C: and D: drives), try changing the drive-letter there and taking it back to your pc. I'm pretty sure the drive letter is configured on the usb device, not on the pc, so even if you change the drive letter on another pc it stays like that.

Did you check the cameras menu theres usually an option you can enable on it for it to be seen as either an external camera or as a mass storage device?

EDIT Did you follow the instruction s as per the manual from page 98 regarding connection to the pc?

Hey a massive thanks for the responses :thumbs2:

Yup I did RTFM Archer, and I was trying to attach the camera correctly !! Since posting, I have been using my external card reader to get at my photos..

However, upon following your suggestion to look at the camera settings, I changed its Transfer Mode from 'Data Storage' to 'Pictbridge', reconnected to the PC and hey Presto - up pops the Microsoft Camera wizard and the Z3 appears in My Cameras !! Yippee!! So thanks for the great tip!!

So this points to the problem definitely being caused by the Mass Storage Device Driver in XP SP2 (as scott is experiencing).. Attaching my MP3 player still causes an instant reboot and unfortunately I cannot change its setting to Pictbridge :)

So if anybody can solve the Mass Storage Device problem, I would be verrry grateful :thumbs:

Cheers again chaps
rob