Canon PowerShot G2 and Windows Vista
I just upgraded one of my home computers to Microsoft Windows Vista Business and discovered that my Canon PowerShot G2 camera was unsupported. I hadn’t bothered to check whether my camera was supported; it seems most digital camera drivers are just glorified USB Mass Storage wrappers and support for those is generally a given.
Unfortunately, Canon’s drivers are a bit more complex, and the lack of Windows Vista compatibility was confirmed on Canon’s technical support page. Their recommended solution was to use a Compact Flash reader to access the memory card directly.
Unmoved and lacking a CF reader, I tried changing various settings and messing with the latest version of Canon’s WIA driver, but I couldn’t get it to work. On a hunch, though, I downloaded Canon’s TWAIN driver (Canon provides the WIA driver for Windows 2000 and XP systems, and the TWAIN driver for older systems) and gave that a go. Lo and behold, I was able to access and download the photos on my camera, albeit through a outdated GUI interface.
So, what’s the lesson to be learned? Don’t trust hardware manufacturers when they make a blanket statement that hardware isn’t ‘compatible’. You’ll often find that there are work-arounds for getting your hardware to work. Of course, also don’t expect them to come to your rescue when something goes wrong.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Hallo,
Have the same problem than you had. Could install the old Twain Driver and Vista tells me that on the driver side is everythink ok. But “Cam4you” my Camera Download programm says “no Camera connected”. What kind of software do you use to access your cam? Does Vista show you the G2 as USB Mass Storage ? Thanks Gerrit
July 31st, 2007 at 11:58 am
I can confirm that old canon twain drivers and vista work properly.
)
Windows fotogallery doesn’t work ! but
Roxio Creator 9 XE – Media Imort did a great job
Cheears
Plexigas
November 14th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I followed your instructions and installed Twain driver but cannot access it trough zoombrowser it gives an error message saying “Zoombrowser EX is currently opened by another user. you will hae to switch users and close Zoombrowser EX before continuing” can u help
November 20th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I have been playing with these confusers since 1988 and dealing with Bill Gates; today I went past the basic “we can’t” and found the note by Stephen…no card reader plus Twain drivers. Most combo printers in the last few years have card readers, like my mom’s, HP. I have a recent Lexmark, with even more slots. I had an advantage, my Gateway has cards slots…which I tried and used today with success.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
i can figure this out.. got a brand new computer now were do i go and what do i do to get my canon powershot g2 conected to the puter so i can load my pictures please help!!!
January 21st, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Harry: I have Vista and get the same error message as you: “Zoombrowser EX is currently opened by another user. You will have to switch users and close Zoombrowser EX before continuing”. Here’s what I did. Right-click on any Zoombrowser EX icon (on the destktop, startup menu, etc.). Select “Run as administrator”. Select “Allow”. That should open it.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I downloaded the TWAIN driver from the canon website and my camera would finally switch to PC mode but I still couldn’t download. I downloaded Picasa since it was free and it worked like a charm. Windows photogallery didnt work and neither did my zoombrowser.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
The really crummy thing about this is that the WIA drivers WORKED on Vista RC1. Support was actually taken away with the final RTM.
This smells of a marketing decision, not a technical one.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:37 am
I installed the TWAIN driver and ZoomBrowser EX 6.0.1 (downloaded from the Canon website ) to Vista and I can load pictures from my Canon PowerShot G2.
Good luck!
February 14th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I tried just about everything that has been mentioned here but couldn ‘t get newer versions of ZoomBrowser to recognise the camera was connected.
I have now downloaded a little app called CanonCam2PC from snapfiles.com and have copied the photos across to the PC.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
In Vista you have to run Zoombrowser as administrator or you get errormessage “Zoombrowser EX is currently opened by another user. you will hae to switch users and close Zoombrowser EX before continuing”
March 14th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Can someone please point me to where the TWAIN drivers are?
Thanks
Margaret
April 13th, 2008 at 9:21 am
to get the driver for the powershot g2, go here:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&tabact=DownloadDetailTabAct&fcategoryid=321&modelid=7476
The for the OS dropdown box, select Windows 2000 (none is listed for Vista)
It will be listed as: “TWAIN Driver 3.9.0 for Windows 98/2000″
April 13th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Is anyone able to uninstall the twain driver? When I attempt to uninstall it , I get the following error:
“The log file ‘c:\program files\cannon\DC USB TWAIN\Uninst.isu’ is not valid or the data has been corrupted. Uninstallation will not continue” I tried both deleting the file as well as re-installing the twain driver again ontop of what’s allready there (in hopes that it would recreate the file). No luck. Does anyone know what i need to delete manually since the unintaller won’t run.. or can anyone suggest a work-around. thanks.
May 31st, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Sarah, your solution work fine!
Download CanonCam2PC small and free program from snapfiles.com !
Thanks!
June 17th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Sarah, your solution work fine!
Download CanonCam2PC small and free program from snapfiles.com !
Thanks!
That worked for me at last tonight as I had worked around this problem all this week. transfering everthing to my new vista laptop!
I think it helped that I found the original canon disc and reinstalled the software, that helped my new vista system find the camera but I still had to use the CanonCam2PC driver to download the pictures, zoombrowser wasn’t much help or the twain driver either. I think I will still buy a multi card reader to be sure I can get to my photos from all my cameras, such a great and simple solution, wish I had thought of that myself!
Thanks, Allen
August 16th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I also had problems with my Canon Powershot S200 at first. The older software for 98/XP installed ok on Vista, but I had the “opened by another user” problem. Aaron’s hint showed how to get around that. Now I can actually download from the S200 into Zoombrowser under Windows Vista Home Premium (Service Pack 1) on my new Compaq Presario C700 purchased in May 2008. I do have to connect the camera, exit out of all pop-ups and then open Zoombrowser with right-click and Allow and then use the Zoombrowser Import Images. It’s futzy, but it worked.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:01 am
The CanonCam2PC program is the only thing that worked for me–thanks for that tip! I tried the Twain driver, but I kept getting an error message that it was incorrectly installed and that it could not recognize the camera. I’m so glad this CanonCam2PC download solved the issue.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
CanonCam2PC worked for me too!
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 am
I need to connect my new Vista 64 computer to my G2 camera and use the remote capture software. I installed the twain driver and it got me nowhere. i can’t get the camera in the device manager to accept this as a driver.
I’ve invested in this setup that works great for me and I’d really hate to have to create a work around just because of a driver issue.
Anyone know how I can get remote capture to work?
March 8th, 2009 at 7:29 am
I just tried installing my Powershot G2 on a new Vista computer – no luck. A caveat here, I tried reading my CF card(s) with my HP-C7180 photo printer CF card slot and they no longer seem to be working in the camera. When I turn on the camaera, the LCD display flashes “CF”. The same message appears when no card is installed. CF card formatting corrupted – I can’t tell. Any ideas appreciated. I’ve order another small CF card and will try CanonCam2PC, if I can
get the camera to work again.
March 8th, 2009 at 8:28 am
canoncam2pc can be found here. http://www.slijkhuis.org/ It seems to have resolved my problem with no side effects. I found the “CF” card error was caused because I did not close the door on the CF card slot.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I ended up crouched at my son’s iMac in order to get the pictures off of my G2. I think the methods described here don’t work for xp64 or Vista64. I guess I’ll be taking my CanoScan down there next.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Just to confirm that CanonCam2PC and the Powershot G2 TWAIN driver for Windows 2000 works in Windows 7 Ultimate. I did not bother installing Zoombrowser. It was a straightforward download of images via CanonCam2PC, and then preview in the downloaded folder itself.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:43 pm
SyCKLe,
I am working in Windows 7 Home. I installed the TWAIN driver and CanonCam2PC, but still cannot get it to recognize the camera. Am I missing a step somewhere?
Thanks for any help you can give.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:05 am
Very interesting blog! Thanks!
February 19th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Hi all,
CanonCam2PC and G2 Twain driver for w2k/xp works fine. I managed to download my photo from my Canon G2.
Thanks all for the contribution and now I don’t have to waste time buying CF card reader.