Formatting is a fairly typical first step but you shouldn't have to do it after the initial setup. Now that you have images on the card, if you format the card you WILL loose the images. Hard to tell what's going on, might be a driver problem. What happens if you just use Windows Explorer to view the files on the card? If you can get in with Explorer, I'd just copy the images to your hard drive and then use Photoshop to view them. You could also try a friend's computer or take the card to the local drugstore, etc. and see if you can access the images there.

I have the Kodak Easy Share, and it works the same way on both my XP and Vista computers. I did not install any driver for the camera. I did install the Kodak program. Once the program is installed, leave the camera off, hook up your usb cable to both the computer and the camera. Now open easy share software. Turn on the camera. You should get up a box, that says, windows has detected new hardware, and it will install a driver for the camera. Once done, Kodak, will come up with a box, to transfer all the pictures. I dont store my pictures in Kodak (it does keep a copy though, that I delete later). I have gone into preferences, and have all photos,directed to go to a folder on my desktop. Your camera, most likely is different than mine, since mine is a couple years old, but my grandaughters is much newer than mine, and she has no problems, putting her pictures on my computer using this method, and my daughter recently got a new Kodak, and she had no problem putting them on my computer either. Good Luck

Memory cards do not wear out like tapes. But they can fail. And, more typically, they can get lost. It will not hurt your memory card, your camera, your computer, etc., to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer. I would do that anytime I did not want to lose the pictures I took. If that's 33 pictures taken at a birthday party, fine. If that's two pictures of a UFO, fine. Once it's on your computer, find some way to either copy it to another computer, burn a CD or DVD with the picture files, or copy the pictures to the Internet. You don't want to lose your only copy of a picture.

Yes, you could take the camera to a photo store and see if they can download your photos, might cost you a little money. If they can't do it, maybe there's something wrong with the software, camera, port, communication with Win XP. I understand your frustration. So many times I have struggled with a problem, lived with it not working right, sometimes paid a shop to troubleshoot, only to find that in most cases it is something simple. Sometimes I did well to pay the shop because it turned out to be something I could not fix without new hardware. I had to have a new USB card installed for all the stuff I plug in, the ports on my computer were not accepting whatever it was, can't remember, I've had to do so much the last few years. Sorry I don't have the answer for you. I couldn't find anything on the net or google archives of people with a similar problem. Don't mess with some of those driver sites, they have an agenda. Email the company. Some don't answer. Persist. They have a website and should have customer support. I hope I picked the right url for the corporation; they certainly have enough different models of cameras. I just cancelled the language pack window that popped up. There is a contact and support tab in the upper right. From that link, you should be able to get to their main page if that page doesn't have anything helpful. Here is a link that might be useful: This looks like the manufacturer w/install info for your cam