Digital Camera Virus?

M
Posted By
matrixrose
Jan 24, 2004
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242
Replies
4
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Closed
Can you get a virus on a digital camera?

Here’s what happene: I work at a passport and visa company who has recently upgraded their polaroid passport photo camera for a digital camera. Each employee was given there own 30 MB card to take pictures. (The camera is Nikon and uses Compact Flash). One of the girls tried using her card, after using it successfully before and got an error saying the card could not be read.

We tried other cards and it worked. I tried using her card in my camera (A canon powershot s50) and it also gave me a card reading error. So I fgured she got her card screwed up somehow.

But now my camera will not recognize any cards, not my 512 mb, nor the 30 mb card that came with the camera. It gave the error: "Card Error" I tried puttin the card directly into my computer (one of my cards, not the original card from work), and i was able to access my pictures just fine. So now I know that it is my camera that is screwed up – which makes me really nervous. Any one know if I could have gotten a virus on my camera?

Cheers,
Rose
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M
matrixrose
Jan 24, 2004
I just got off the phone with a canon rep – he said that no the camera cannot get a virus. Alas, I will have to send my precious toy to the service factory to see if they can find out why it is no longer reading cards – just seems like an awefully weird coeincidense that it just stopped working after the I tried to read that other defective card.

Cheers,
Rose
M
mistermonday
Jan 24, 2004
Rose, it is unlikely that you got a virus in your camera. One of the things that Flash cards do not like is being inserted or extracted from the camera while the power is on. It should always be turned off or else the data gets corrupted and the format gets corrupted so that the camera will not recognize it. In some cases the card suffers permanent damage.
The other thing you should be checking is to be sure that the cards are not being plugged into desktop or laptop computers where they are being reformatted and are no longer being recognized by the camera. Take a card that your camera no longer recognizes and then use the Camera menu to format the card and see if it works again.
Nikon camera come with a program called Nikon View which when installed on your desktop will all you to import the images from the flash card and view them without doing anything to the flash card.

Finally, while it is rare, there could be a problem with the firmaware version inside your camera. You should check Nikons website for the latest firmware version.

Regards, MM
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 24, 2004
mm’s suggestions are all great, just one thing… , she may have spilled soda or something on her card and it screwed up your camera too when you tried it there. but it’s probably the format issue. 🙂
M
matrixrose
Jan 27, 2004
Doh! It must have been that Soda. . .no my cards are all fine. I didn’t even lose the pictures that were on them, which is good because I had just shot 60 pics of my niece that I didn’t want to lose.

The Nikon camera at work is working, it’s my Canon that seems to be out of commission. I am sending it to the shop tomorrow, it is still under warrenty. The support guy on the phone suggested I do so, the camera is not reading ANY card.

Thanks for the great advice MM & Dave.

Cheers,
Rose

By the way I did try reformatting the cards on my laptop using Canon’s software (after I downloaded my pics), but it didn’t help.

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