Strange Issue with CF cards and Win 7

[Dusty]

I have a strange issue with my a350 and 16GB CF cards on Windows 7. When I'm using a CF card in the 350, and hook the camera up to the computer. It tells me the card is not formatted correctly and tells me I have to format it before it can be read. Hooking the same set-up to my XP machines produces no problems whatsoever.

I have been able to read the same cards from the a700, but I think that it told me they needed to be scanned first.

I have formatted the one in the a350 and it still reads un-formatted in Win7. The other I'm not sure of - and I don't have it on hand right now, nor the a700.

Has anyone else run into this? Is the a350 not rated for use with a 16Gb card? The manual only addresses number of shots up to an 8GB card, but that was the biggest available at that time. I would tend to think that the in-camera OS would use whatever open standard or API there was, and not have a problem with larger cards.

Dusty

[agorabasta]

The manual only addresses number of shots up to an 8GB card, but that was the biggest available at that time.

32GB cards were quite common at the time of a350 introduction, just as they were at the earlier introduction of a700.

But the 300/350 are really picky about cards. My a300 was only able to see a 32GB Transcend x133 card as 16GB, and it couldn't read it into an XP machine via its USB connection at all.

You really need to check the card compatibility before buying it for use with a300/350.

[Greg Beetham]

Dusty the card size is well within the 32Gb FAT32 partition size limit so there is something else wrong, probably some kind of interface issue, (I would have thought the late NTFS machines would still be able to read FAT32 without any problems) have a look in here and see if there is a Microsoft ‘Fix It’ tool that can diagnose the problem. http://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com/Portal
Actually it’s really worthwhile installing the ‘Fix It’ centre on your machine.
Greg

[Dusty]

Greg, their beta test is now over for Win 7 users, and since I have no problem on XP, I didn't bother to d/l that version.

Actually, after SP3, XP finally became an OS that was fairly stable and did everything I wanted it too. I'll miss it when they EOL it.

Dusty

[agorabasta]

Actually, after SP3, XP finally became an OS that was fairly stable and did everything I wanted it too. I'll miss it when they EOL it

Actually, that XP is long decommissioned; that 'long' is really long ago... Means EOL date is long past.

[Greg Beetham]

I didn't 'get' that one Dusty, about the Beta testing?
Greg

[Dusty]

I didn't 'get' that one Dusty, about the Beta testing?
Greg

According to the link, the fixit tool was a beta test. They've filled the quota of beta downloads for Win7, but apparently not yet for XP.

Since Win7 is the one with the problem, I can't d/l the tool.

Dusty

[agorabasta]

Here's the non-beta tool - http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/