The Missing Disk Saga

This morning I called my daughter-in-law to see if I had left those disks behind in the room I was using. She said she hadn’t seen them but she would go and look again. I really really needed the one that had the drivers for the Dazzle SD card reader to be used on my desk top computer. The laptop is XP so I just plugged the Dazzle card reader in and it worked, but the desktop computer has Win 98SE and that OS doesn’t deal well with things that need a USB port.

Then I thought, “I wonder if I can go on line and download a driver?” I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner so off I go, via Google to the site for Dazzle cardreader only to find that they are now being made by Zio. There was an active link so I popped over to the Zio site. I have very positive feelings about Zio because that was the first card reader I bought when I got my first digital camera, an Olympus that used Smart Media cards. It was SO easy to pop the card into the reader and voila!—there were all my pictures.  A piece of technology that works the way it should.

So, I find the heading “Downloads” and read through what they are offering and, YES! There it is! A driver for Win 98SE for the kind of reader I have–with a picture, even. So, I download it successfully and when I have it safely, I plug the card reader into the USB hub on my desk only to be told that there isn’t enough power coming from the hub and it needed to be plugged into the CPU. I have had this information before for other things and know what to do. It basically involves getting down on my 70 year-old knees and peering into the spaghetti-clutter under my desk with a flashlight that is barely operative to find the USB port on the back of my computer… But then, I suddenly have a brilliant idea. I have yet another card reader –a Maus which reads XD disks {Olympus and Fuji} already plugged into the back because the XD card reader also wasn’t happy with the hub. So, if I take the XP card reader out from the end of the cord and plug in the Dazzle SD reader, it should work, right?

So, I did. And up came the Blue Screen of Death! AAAAAAGH!

I rebooted the computer and tried again. And this time, it worked. The Dazzle card reader found its driver and read all my pictures. I have spent most of the day playing with my pictures and having a lovely time.

Oh, and did I mention that later this evening, I found the missing disks inside my everyday purse which was packed in the suitcase and which I haven’t opened until today ?

Until later..