Cannot install Vivitar Digital Camera driver.

The computer is an old HP Pavillion with Win 98SE. My wife has had it since new. She recently got a Vivitar 7340 7 Megapixel digital camera and when hooking up the USB cable the camera says " Processing" and just hangs there. According to the instructions after all the software is installed and the camera is connected to the computer and by going to "MY Computer" there should be a Removeable device/Mass storage icon or something like those. No, nothing. I have tried different ways to install the camera driver software but so far nothing has worked. Mind you the Arcsoft software is all installed. Any ideas?

Later. Pepse.

 

I always tended to connect USB hardware to a Win 98 computer when it was powered off. You could try that if you haven't already.

Get any updated drivers from the HP website:
www.hp.com/support
The USB Controller drivers will be included with the chipset drivers, although they may be separate.

Does the information about the camera specify the version of USB. Is it compatible with the earlier versions? I expect the computer to have USB 1.1.

Have you tried connecting it to a Win XP computer? It might possibly be a problem with the camera itself. You should not(?) need to install the software on the XP computer to see the photos.

Check in Add/Remove Programs, in case there may be a similar type of program installed, the programs may be clashing.

Can you run the software program and get it to open a photo file already on the computer?

You can try running Control Panel -> Add New Hardware and see if you find if it is listed (using the "I will find the drivers myself..." radio button). Try directing the Add New Hardware wizard to the CD with the drivers on them (after booting with the camera connected).

Lots of areas for investigation

Matt

 

Yes this camera works fine on my XP hard drive. I think it will be useless to go to HP's website to look for drivers for her computer, BUT for laughs I will check it out after we try a few of your ideas.

She does have drivers installed for an HP camera. But if she removes that then she will lose all her photos from the HP software.

"Can you run the software program and get it to open a photo file already on the computer?" NO.

As for "Add New Hardware" the camera shows up there with a yellow question mark meaning the software is installed but not working properly. We have tried to re-install the driver software a few times to no avail.

We tried the "Connecting to computer" (when shut off) and started it up and there is no change; doesn't see it.

Vivitar is no help as the new phone number we got for them is for someone that bought them out and they have no info at present on this camera.

Pepse.

 

I would stake a large wager on it being a conflict with the "HP camera" software.

If you use the program's uninstaller (Add/Remove Programs), it should never remove/delete any of your personal files unless you tell it to do so (that's why you see something like "Not all the files/folders could be removed, you will need to remove them manually" after some uninstalls). During the uninstall though, sometimes it can ask you if want to remove the "modified" files/folders, so I am somewhat wary.

I would use the HP program to backup the photos to optical disk or another drive (HDD or other storage device). If it doesn't have a backup option, you can search the hard drive for the name of one/some of the photo files and find where they are being stored. Back them up, then uninstall the HP software.

You need a backup of important data anyway, what if the HDD failed?

Uninstalling that HP program is what I think might allow you to run the new software.

Matt

 

Well, to make a long story short she re-installed the HP Pavillion software, so it is like new again. So, outside of installing Netscape 7.2 and downloading Firefox 2.0.0.16 nothing else has been added. So, I re-installed the Vivitar software and even went to custom install which showed the Win98SE driver and the Arcsoft software. It installed everything and when hooking up the camera nothing happens on the computer. There is no Mass Storage device or anything similar to that in MY Computer. When looking in Add/Remove software the drivers for this camera are listed. When going to Add New Hardware it detects the camera software but with a Yellow question mark stating that the drivers are not working. It will not install the drivers from the CD. I have tried different ways and Nothing. So, the drivers are there but not detecting the camera.

And as I said the software works fine in my XP hard drive. So it is a Win98SE problem.

Pepse.

 

I think the problem you have is that the USB ports are 1.1, and the camera software is looking for USB 2.0, not finding it and then balking. Your XP machine would definitely have the USB 2.0 ports.
Some manufacturer's will encode their software to only accept the minimum hardware requirements.

 

markp62,

Okay, so the thing to do is for me to get a PCI USB controller?

I would think that should cure the problem.

Pepse.

 

I think it would, too.