Help! USB driver problem wrecking my head..!

Hi folks, hope someone can help, I'm at my wits end with this...!

Bought a dinky little digital camera on eBay for my kid — Fuji iX-100, think it was discontinued about 3 or 4 years ago. Nice and cheap (Stg£16 delivered), grand little point-and-shoot w/ flash and a bit of extra memory - but no software. Grand, I thought, it's an USB device, I shouldn't need any drivers under WinXP...

Only problem is WinXP doesn't recognise it and can't install an appropriate driver, so doesn't recognise the device. I've googled left right and centre, I've been all over the Fujifilm websites (.com, .co.uk and .jp) and the model isn't even listed in the drivers/downloads sections, although I did manage to get a full manual for it...

The only links Google is throwing up is to some very technical-looking (for me! [broken link removed] ) Linux/Unix forums where people are asking the same thing as me : "Where can I download a driver for this thing?!?". I tried a thing called gphoto2, but no joy. I emailed Fuji tech support, but I haven't got anything back yet. And, as luck would have it, old reliable www.driverguide.com seems to be acting up at the moment and won't let me sign in, so no luck there for the moment, either. I have tried a couple of other other Fuji XP driver downloads, but they're for later Finepix models and they don't do squat for this little lady... [broken link removed]

Anybody got any suggestions? (other than "buy a card reader"! I don't have any other use for a SmartMedia reader...)

TIA,

Run regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB and look down the USB entries to find which VID/PID this yoke has and then we can hunt around for it.

Despair not Dr M. The Artist Formally Known As Dougal is on the case.

"The Artist Formerly Known As is on the case."

Ah, another one appears out of the woodwork. Emigration down under has not taken place yet, me thinks?

A thread of who's who is definitely on the cards.

Thanks, Decani, I've run regedit and it throws up this set of sub-folders...

I've looked inside them all, but I don't see anything to identify which of my USB devices each Vid/Pid folder relates to (I have a couple of mp3 players, an external HD, a Fuji Finepix camera and a Logitech webcam).

But — would there actually be anything in there related to the iX-100, given that Device manager reported that it couldn't install the necessary software? When I connect the iX-100 and look inside Device manager, it shows a problem entry (under 'Imaging devices', one of those little yellow circles with a '?'). Should I rerun regedit with the yoke attached and see if there's an extra Vid/Pid folder then? (in which case I'll have to wait until later, since daughter dear has taken the camera off to the seaside for the day...)

Thanks again for any further guidance you can offer!

Our Fuji MX 1200 (5 years old) doesn't work on XP.

Bought a card reader which works fine, fast download of fotos and no camera battery wastage while downloading.

Maplin are good for card readers.

OK. First thing is to try these drivers (found on DriverGuide but through another site - www.usb-drivers.com). They're down as Windows 95 but they seem to run without incident on XP. Also, someone has noted on DriverGuide that they work on XP SP1 and SP2.

Failing that, you could try hacking WINDOWS\INF\usbstor.inf as I'd imagine it's a regular mass storage device (like a USB keyring drive). But try the 'proper' drivers first.

Cheers again, Decani, much appreciated.

Daughter dearest ended up staying away overnight with her friend's folks, so I'll have to wait 'til tonight or tomorrow to try them out.

If that fails, nil desperandum - I've since managed to grab a secondhand card reader + 64Mb card on eBay for the princely sum of £4.70 (incl. p&p) So now she'll be able to store 230+ snaps (at 'fine' 1.3Mp resolution) before needing to empty the card. Also, she got a video out cable with the camera, which means she can run her pix as a slideshow on any TV, in between connecting to the PC...

Back again, Decani - still no joy, I'm afraid...

I tried those drivers, but they said either that they'd only work with Win98, or that they wouldn't run under 'multiple processor systems'...(?)

Then I went looking for that WINDOWS\INF\usbstor.inf file you mentioned hacking, but I don't have a WINDOWS\INF folder, and the nearest thing I could find was a yoke called C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\USBSTOR.SYS...

Copied it to the desktop and had a peek inside with Notepad, but what I found there looks like inscriptions from the Rosetta Stone - except maybe for this bit, towards the end:

S t r i n g F i l e I n f o à
0 4 0 9 0 4 B 0 L 
C o m p a n y N a m e M i c r o s o f t C o r p o r a t i o n d 
F i l e D e s c r i p t i o n U S B M a s s S t o r a g e C l a s s D r i v e r r )
F i l e V e r s i o n 5 . 1 . 2 6 0 0 . 2 1 8 0 ( x p s p _ s p 2 _ r t m . 0 4 0 8 0 3 - 2 1 5 8 ) 8
I n t e r n a l N a m e u s b s t o r . s y s € .
L e g a l C o p y r i g h t © M i c r o s o f t C o r p o r a t i o n . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . @
O r i g i n a l F i l e n a m e u s b s t o r . s y s j %
P r o d u c t N a m e M i c r o s o f t ® W i n d o w s ® O p e r a t i n g S y s t e m @ 
P r o d u c t V e r s i o n 5 . 1 . 2 6 0 0 . 2 1 8 0 D
V a r F i l e I n f o $  T r a n s l a t i o n

Click to expand...

- so I'm reluctant to go messing around with that!

Maybe I should just sit tight for a few more days and wait on that SM card reader...?

Thanks a million for all your efforts, 'though - and buen viaje, next December...

Well I'm back from sunny Galway after the airshow last Sunday. Great stuff. But I'm back home in stinking Dublin now

I didn't have any problems running that EXE on Windows XP Home here but, anyway. Regarding the INF hack, do you have the 'Show hidden files and folders' option disabled in Explorer? Opne up an Explorer (e.g. C: drive, D: drive, etc.) window and go to Tools, Folder Options ... and go to the View tab. Under Hidden Files and Folders, select the 'Show hidden files and folders' option. Also untick the 'Display the contents of system folders' option. Methinks the INF directory is being hidden from view because of this.

You could always just go to Start/Run... and type 'notepad c:\windows\inf\usbstor.inf'. This will open the INF in notepad. First thing to do is save a backup of the file so go to File/Save as ... and then re-save the file with a different name. After doing that close notepad and then do the Start/Run ... thing again so that you re-open the original usbstor.inf file.

At this point just search for the string [fujifilm] (include square brackets). This will take you down to the Fuji section for USB Mass Storage devices. Look at the next line and you'll see:

There's one already there with PID 0100. You've got PID 0130 (from your registry screenshot) so copy and paste this line and then replace the 0100's with 0130 so you'll have this:
Save this modified USBSTOR.INF and then try plugging in your device. The idea is that when you plug it in and Windows see the USB vendor/device ID it will see your added line and use that info to install the right driver with the right parameters.

It's worth a shot.

Hope this isn't too far off topic Decani/'our Dougal' but what's the Galway Airshow like? I'm working in Clacton-on-Sea Essex (60 miles north-east of London) and there's an annual airshow here (I'd never actually come across one until I landed up working in Cracktown-on-Sea). Very impressive.....folks come from all over Europe for the two days. Good to hear from you. It looked for awhile as if a lot of veteran AAM'ers had been 'lost in migration'.

Nice one, Decani, mmmmm - Galway, air show, and on probably the last fine weekend of 2004...

Thanks for sticking with this one, but that last shot still didn't do the trick - not even after a reboot and a bit more quality time in device-manager-land...

For what it's worth, this thing has also confounded three of our own IT guys in work, one of whom really knows his device drivers onions! I think he was a bit miffed about it, so he rang up Fuji (Irl) who explained that the software behind this wasn't actually written by Fuji, but by @xia. There used to be a software CD available from the , but it's long since out of stock, and in any case it cost £15 + p&p - you can understand why I'd be reluctant to throw that kind of extra money at a secondhand camera I only paid £11 for! (+£5 p&p)

So I had a little wander around the @xia website - yes, in Japanese! ('though when you mouseover the links you can pretty much guess what they point to, 'cause all the page names are in English...) Even downloaded Japanese font support for Acrobat reader, so I could browse the few .pdf sheets! They do provide support for later models - the iX-1, iX-20 & iX30 — but nothing for the old iX-100. Downloaded and tried out those newer driver packs anyway - just on the off-chance - but still nada...

(At least I picked up a bit of Japanese, as you can see... )

I reckon this is just an example of a one-off, bottom-of-the-range collaboration that Fuji & Axia between them subsequently decided to pull support on. Pity really, 'cause it's a grand little cheapie digital camera, otherwise. I checked out some of the pictures on the telly screen (via the video out cable), and the quality doesn't look too bad at all, considering the price/pixels involved. Nice lens, shame about the software...?

Ah well - roll on the trusty card-reader solution!

Cheers again,

Oh well. God loves a trier. Or so I learned in my former life as a priest. Device drivers are my bread and butter and I've done similar things for other people with legacy devices on the newer operating systems. Why OEM's make things difficult when it comes to commodity devices like digital cameras I don't know. But then I suppose this is quite an old device that might pre-date USB mass storage so they weren't able to take advantage of the newer developments. Hey ho.

Marie, the airshow was great. Very impressive. I was at Baldonnel a few years ago and got in 'through the back door'. This, however, was genuinely free and it was nice to see so many people out in the glorious weather. Although there was quite a lot of booze about, everybody was in great spirits (no pun intended) so nobody minded. The place was overflowing with litter that evening but we were there at about 11am the next day and there was ne'er a hint of anything any rubbish around. Well done Galway Council on both the airshow and the clean-up. In fairness, the bins were absolutely chocka so all people could do was leave stuff around the bins. Fortunately we met up with friends who lived outside the city and they kindly dropped us in and picked us up so we didn't have to worry about parking. Traffic was mayhem. Display was great. Especially the Red Arrows. I didn't have a programme to hand but all of the exhibits entered stage right so when a Tornado zapped in from the left and everybody shat themselves when they heard the bang. Great stuff. Then there was also the Blackhawk. Scary biscuits. Looked bad and it was quiet. And we should know, living in the shadow of Citywest Hotel with 'copters going over frequently. A Jaguar also made an appearance and visited all three dimensions in a matter of seconds. But it was the Red Arrows (or the Red boys as I heard someone refer to them as) that stole the show. A whole half-hour of zip, zang, ke-blam and coloured smoke. All kinds of parallel displays where 5 of them would be front-stage doing something and then the other 4 would fly in. Even managed to do a cool heart with an arrow going through it. You really have to hand it to them. Why they didn't finish with them I don't know. After they did their stuff everybody went their way but this poor lad was flying around doing some great stuff and nobody seemed to appreciate it. Then there was the Irish Air-Sea Rescue 'copter as well. It didn't do them any favours to see everyone walking away when they were strutting their stuff. That'd be the only poor thing I'd have to say. Leave the best till last and that's that.

If anyone's interested in this kind of thing, you might like to have a look at the [broken link removed] in July.

Would love to trip along to the Bray airshow, looks like its on August 21st though, not July.