ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: When I connect my usb cord and camera to my computer, the computer used to recognize the connection and immediately list several options for viewing the pictures.  Now nothing happens.  I noticed the change after I updated the Norton AntiVirus.  I did try my camera on my neighbor’s computer and it works just fine.  We have tried the USB ports on our computer and the ports work fine.  So it does not seem to be the camera, USB cord or the ports 

– Suzanne E.
Baker, Fla

A: This is either an incompatibility, or Norton perceives your camera driver’s activation as a threat, and is disabling it.  I suspect it’s a bit of both, since Norton must be able to monitor disk drives as they mount and dismount in order to be able to effectively monitor for potential virus activity.  If your USB camera driver gets assigned a drive letter when it loads, then it is mounting as a device.   If that’s the case, you can likely fix this problem by completely uninstalling and re-installing your camera driver.  When Norton is installed before the camera driver, Norton will be much better behaved when the driver activates.  Don’t forget to read all dialog boxes carefully during the installation, and answer appropriately.  Many mistakes get made by trying to rush through a software installation.

Q: I am an XP user, and take many photos, which I initially download into “My Pictures” as JPEG.  I then edit them with either Picasa or PhotoShop.   I now have accumulated some 25 GBytes of photos – some carefully edited – and wish to back them up into an external hard drive dedicated strictly to photo storage.

My question is:  If I back up “My Pictures”, will I also automatically be backing up the edited versions of those photos?   In other words:  Where do the edited photos go once I close out Picasa or PhotoShop?  Do they go back into “My Pictures” somehow, or must I go and fetch them from some other hiding place in order to back them up?  And if so, where do I look to be sure I got them all?  It is the same for Vista users?   

– David K..
Niceville, Fla

A:  Windows isn’t hiding any of your pictures, and doesn’t back up anything that you don’t tell it to.  It’s a simple matter of taking responsibility for what you do with your files, David.  When you edit, if you use “Save” it will save right back over your original, which is then lost.  If you use “Save As…” you can give it another name, and even change the location, thereby preserving the original.  The choices are yours to make, and it helps to use the directory hierarchy in Windows, and use subdirectories to keep your pictures sorted.  When you back-up, if you choose a directory, everything in that directory, and all subdirectories under it will be backed up.  These concepts aren’t specific to any particular version of Windows, so yes, they apply to Vista too.