It applies to any and all devices that you put into ports on your computer regardless of the operating system your computer is running. A memory card, a "thumb" drive, an external hard drive, or anything that plugs into a USB port or a memory reader port on a computer should only be removed after clicking the Safely Remove Hardware icon to stop any activity on the device. Otherwise you risk damaging the device or the port on the computer and losing information stored on the device.

Elaine if HP do not have updated drivers to cure this try phoning the store where you bought the 2 gig Kingston card and seek advice. Perhaps something as simple as an external card reader might cure the problem. I seem to remember you live in Mississauga, if so Canada Computes at Eglinton and Cawthra have a selection of readers for $10. Don't expect too much advice from them though. Good prices but not too helpful with questions. Off to check out my wife's 2 gig memory stick duo now, you have got me thinking.........

no my pc doesn,t reconize the ped basic card as a removeable storage. I would think it should. I have searched and replaced most of the free designs I lost but the ones on my card are ones I bought on ebay and not so easy to find the same ones again. 2 1/2 years of designs lost wow! at least I only had a few weeks worth!

When you remove a memory card from a camera and put it into a reader, be very careful not to perform any operation that 'writes back' to the card. For example, you may have opened an image into photoshop or MicroSoft's photo viewer and made some minor adjustments. When you went to delete the image, the software asks, "Do you want to save?" If you answer, "Yes", the image gets written back to the card and this may spoil its propertiary format. When this happens, the only solution is to re-format the card and loose all images on it. You may have to, with the card in the camera, delete all images before it will re-format. If the card is so messed up that the camera's software will not touch it, try this: Put the card in the external card reader and delete all images, then see if the camera will re-format the card. Make sure there are no files ledt on the card set to 'read only'. Scrapeing the gold plated contacts is not recommended for two reason: Typical gold plating for this kind of application is about 5 microms thick. Any thinner, and you would be able to see through the plating. Scratching it rubs through the plating and may carry embedded comtaminants to the contacts in the camera. The secomd problem is static discharge. Minute static charges impressed on the contacts can ruin the card. The best policy is do not touch the contacts. By the way, I also use an external card reader to extract images from the card. I copy the images to a hard drive or other storage device and for the lack of a better term, call these my master copies. I do all my editing on copies from the 'master file', keeping the master copy intact and never witting back to it. Thus, if my edit gets messed up, I merely get another copy and play with it. You may want to consider setting the master copy to 'read only'.