Saturday, March 29, 2008

My card slots are still flakey

I managed to get my card slots to work for a while by reinstalling the drivers. It seemed that a driver from Pinnacle for the USB HD TV tuner driver was driving the USB device related to the card slots. I reinstalled the Windows drivers and all was well... for a while.

I placed an XD card in the SD/XD slot and it read fine.

Today after a reboot, about half the day the drive letters were showing. I went out and took pictures. When I put the card in the card slots the drive letters had gone.

I'm not sure that the Pinnacle USB TV is the only culprit. What might happen is that Windows Media software goes and looks for a TV guide only to mess up the system.

The other thought I had is that maybe I have too many hard drives in my system - but these are USB ports so that shouldn't matter - should it? I have 3 internal drives partitioned and an external USB drive, plus the card slots, plus my Epson R300 printer seems to want to take a drive letter - which I can't read.

Once again when the drive letters disappeared I also had an HP iPAQ hx2415 and an Apple iPhone plugged into USB ports - as well as various other printers, in all about 10 USB devices linked to powered hubs.

Monday, March 24, 2008

More thoughts on disappearing memory card slot letters

I did find a couple of other things to check if your memory card slot letters - like drive letters - disappear.
1. I do believe that some services were turned off that should have been on - I'm not sure exactly what services these are - but some are regarding cards, others Windows Media.
2. I rebooted the machine and the drive letters corresponding to the memory slots on my HP a6152n computer were showing. After I'd plugged my PDA (Windows Mobile 5 iPAQ) and iPhone into their USB ports the drive letters disappeared.
3. I had another problem on one occasion when the drive letters appeared - when I put the card in the slot - despite the green light illuminating - it was unrecognized and the computer told me to put the card in - but it was there already. Maybe I needed patience.
4. I then turned on services that I thought might be needed - unplugged my PDA and iPhone and rebooted - the drive letters reappeared. I put the memory card in - it was read - Windows Media software said there was nothing on it. Horrors - the finder, shell, explorer - whatever you call the basic Vista OS view of the files showed my pictures on the card. I copied them to the computer - finally...

I believe the computer sometimes runs out of resources or has conflicts on the USB ports - maybe it just takes time for all the software to load.

Hope this helps anyone who has similar problems.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The printer wouldn't let me see my memory card slots.

I have taken the memory cards out of my cameras and put them in the memory card slots in my HP a6152n computer many times. They work like disk drives - you can see the files and copy them from the memory cards to the computer.

However last week, the letters associated with the memory card slots - letters like R:, S:, T: and U: vanished from my machine. I used HP's chat and it was clear that the System Devices did not show the memory card slot hardware. One might have thought a wire was loose.

As I had not opened up my computer nor moved it I thought it very unlikely that a wire could come loose. So I waited and saw what would happen.

Then I switched on my printer, an Epson R300, and it was taking up drive letter S:. I rebooted my computer and switched off the printer. The memory device letters reappeared when I listed the disk drives on my computer. So I rebooted again, this time with the printer turned on and changed its disk letter to O using the Disk Management for Storage - that comes under the Administrative Tool, Computer Management.

I then rebooted the computer and all the drive letters were present. So I didn't have to open up the computer to connect the wires. The HP technician, while extremely helpful, never considered this possibility - neither did I. Hopefully I can save you time if your drive letters magically disappear by this post!

Why is it so hard to connect a laptop to a projector?

Its amazing after years of using laptops and projectors that they still have problems connecting. Sometimes the projectors are too smart and adjust to a laptop and then the laptop is changed and the connection no longer works. Sometimes the laptop has a different resolution from the projector. Sometimes the laptop is set up to work with a TV (into NTSC or PAL) and then cannot connect to a digital projector.

There are all kinds of problems. What amazes me is that this relatively simple problem is not solved automatically with a standard by now - after all the physical plug almost always works.

Another problem at conferences is microphones. Why is that speakers don't always realize that if they stand in front of the speakers they might get feedback? Why is it that microphones are sometimes awkward to switch on or don't work. You'd think that by now they and their connected sound systems would be foolproof.

Its amazing to me that technicians are constantly needed at conferences to plug in laptops, partly because rooms are reconfigured and not set up permanently for presentations.

How long do you think it will be before every lecture, presentation and slide show that one attends will work without a glitch?