My software stopped working long ago but the camera keeps on tickin'. I take the card from the camera and use a card reader to put them into My Pictures. Most printers/scanners have card readers, also. Hope this helps.

BTW, when Kodak no longer supported the Gallery, I lost a lot of pictures from the computer. Thank goodness I had put them on CDs.

Well guess what? I decided to go into KES and delete the albums with corrupted files (photos). So I went outside and snapped some more photos for September. Came in, proceeded to transfer those to the software (for some reason it would transfer any photos I took today), and suddenly all my photos on the memory card transferred! So I have all the lost photos back except one of my cat which I really like but I must have deleted that from my camera. I don't know what was going on, but at least I have my photos back - for now.

daisy - what exactly is a card reader? I saw that term when I was searching for answers as to why KES failed. So in other words you bypass the Kodak EasyShare Software altogether?

Every so often I back my photos up onto flash drives, but don't do it regularly so I forget how to do it! I never can figure out how to transfer only the photos I don't already have on the flash drive. I'm going to work with it tomorrow.
I have never tried putting them on a CD. I need to learn how to do that.

I only use a card reader, never installed extra programs onto my pc no need for it so why clutter up the hard drive. Windows has it all built in. I have a little usb card reader and my pc has one built in as do most newer pc.

A little usb card reader costs under $10, I have bought several at big Lots and walmart for just a few bucks.

What you do is take the memory card from the camera and insert it into the appropriate slot in the card reader which you have plugged into the usb port of the pc, when the box opens you can choose to view the files and copy them to the pc.
Once done you click on the safely remove icon that appeared on the task bar when you plugged into the usb, once it says safely remove you can remove from usb, take the card out and put back in the camera.
There's lots of tutorials if you Google it.

I use a card reader. I've got one that connects to my computer through a USB port. I appears as an acessory drive in the "My Computer" panel. These are available from Best Buy, other computer supply stores, and office supply stores.

I would not be surprised if many things once supported by Kodak have fallen by the wayside. Earlier this year, Kodak declared bankruptcy and closed its consumer camera business.

I'm not sure about details, but Kodak may be re-organizing under bankruptcy laws and will retain a portion of their business: consumer cameras and accessories are out. One of Kodak's largest business was x-ray film. They sold more square footage of this material than they ever did for conmuner cameras. Kodak missed the digital camera boat by being too late with too little in the game. They tried, but this market moved too fast for them to ever get a grip.

This is really too bad; Kodak made some of the best color transparency film (and color negative) in the world.

I really like my Kodak camera. I had read about the bankruptcy this summer, in fact the KES software can not be downloaded anymore; but if you have it already installed you can still use it. Last night I used my flash drive to copy last year's and up to Sept. of this year's photos. I already have from 2007 thru 2010 on there, it's just that I'm not good about doing that. I always copy from KES to My Picture files each time I take photos, so at least I have copies in my PC.

So, I'm going to check into the card reader and then uninstall KES. I guess the photos will have the same quality if not downloaded through KES first? Thanks.

Actually Kodak was not too little too late,,,it was total stupidity on their part....Kodak invented digital photography back in the early 70's but they didn't take the opportunity to move forward with it.

In regards to the problem with Kodak Easyshare, I ran into a similar problem with my Pentax DSLR's.

I had a computer crash and when I bought a the new one it had Windows 7, 64bit mode, but the software for my camera only operated in 32bit mode and the camera mfg had no upgrade.

I buy spare HDSC cards on Ebay for 1/2 the going retail price or less and quite often when you buy the cards they come with a free USB card reader. I currently have about a dozen 10gb SDHC cards and three or four card readers. Add to that, I have 4 lithium ion batteries for one camera and 5 sets of rechargeable AA's for the other, so when Jan and I go on a road trip I don't ahve to worry about film or batteries for days.

For archive storage I use external hard drives. Four years ago I bought an 80gb external USB plug & play external for $32 just to try them out..two months later I bought a 500gb for $60 and on both purchases I thought I found a real bargain. Last april, for my birthday Jan bought me a tiny USB plug & play external that will fit in a shirt pocket for a mere $45 and it is 1TB..so I will probably wear out all three of my DSLR's before I run out of storage.

Lazypup has the right idea for long term storage - use hard drives.

Do not depend on camera memory cards and thumb drives for permanent storage. These eventually go bad with age. Do not trust any that are more than 5 years old. The end life may be 10 years. These cards and drives contain a 'keep-alive battery' and when the battery dies, so does the card. If you have cards that are more than 5 years old, its a good idea to replace these.

A solid state memory junction is good for about 10,000 writes and rewrites. That is what kept this technology our of 'hard drives' for so long. Improvements and techniques have come along such that computer makers are beginning to place solid state drives (SSD) into lap tops. However, these are not perfect. A gamer might reach the life limit of a SSD due to his thousands of rewites to the disk. The average used probably will not reach this limit before the computer conks out or a replacement is bought.

I had a bunch of photos stored on CDs, but I was warned by a genealoguy instructor to switch because the technology is changing and CDs will go the way of tape and floppy disks - these will be obsoleted in favor of DVDs. In the not too distant future, manufacurers will stop making CD drives and disks. Personally, I prefered CDs over DVDs for photo storage due to the larger spot size and separation compared to a DVD. But this won't matter in the future if no drives exist to read the CDs.

As far as I can see, storage of digital photos and genealoggy files are a huge problem for me. Right now, I hobble along by moving these files to a external hard drive and that drive runs only when making backups. The rest of the time, it is off. (A purist would rightly claim this is not safe; Its much better to have a second backup copy on a another drive.) This leads to setting up a RAID array to improve relaibility. I have not done so since I am not well schooled about the features and behavor of RAID arrays. That is something I should learn.

I'm feeling like a real idiot right now. First of all, thanks for the replies and advice.

I went to Radio Shack today to look at card readers and USB hubs. I complained that I have to pull my PC away from the wall to access the back of it and do aerobics in order to plug in my flash drives. The kid at Radio Shack looked at me awhile and then said, "Don't you have a USB port on the front of your PC?" Of course I just looked back at him. Duh, I dont' know. He said check first before buying the hub. Then I asked about card readers and he advised me on which one to buy but I decided I'd wait and go back payday and get the more expensive hub into which I'd put a card reader which would be better for transferring media.

Came home. Searched for port on front on PC......yep...right there. Flash drive fits right in.
Then I see something else...near it..."SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro"....wait a minute. Does my camera's memory card fit in here? not in the bottom slot, but it fit right in the larger top one. Boom - photos on memory card transfer right to computer. No need for Kodak EasyShare. AFTER ALL THIS TIME.

Now I realize what several of you were trying to tell me. How dumb can I get? And thanks to the Radio Shack guy who didn't pressure me into buying something I didn't need! How often does that happen? ha.

The only advantage I do see in the KES is that you could use it to edit photos, use different themes, ect. but I did that very rarely. Even tho it will use space on my computer I may keep it for awhile in case I have a project in mind. Especially since once I delete it from my system, it can not be downloaded again.

Another word of advice: Never edit files on your original storage device especially if it is a storage card for your camera. To edit, always make a copy to some other location and work on that copy. Do not write back an edited copy to the card.

1. This minimizes the danger of over-writing your original file with an edited one. Never mess with the original. That way, you can always return to the original for another copy. This is especially important for files stored in a 'lossy' format such as .jpg .

Tip: SD cards have a tiny slide "switch" on their side. This is an anti-write switch. If you wish to be super cautious, slide that switch to the protect position before inserting the card into a reader. The card can not be written to, only read. Don't forget to move the switch back before inserting it into the camera.

This is not a real switch, Its only a physical position indicator. The actually sensor is in the device in which you insert the card. SD devices (cameras, card readers, etc.) have s tiny 'feeler' that senses the position of this 'switch'.

2. When handling an SD card (or any other storage card), do not touch the contacts. This will offer some protection against static discharges, and it keeps the contacts clean.

3. Writng to a card with a standard device may destroy photos stored on the card. Some camera manufacturers use a non-standard proprietary format. Writing to a formatted camera card with a standard device will not hurt the card, but it can mess up special formats and cause file loss.

Recall, when you insert a new card into the camera, it first requires the card to be formatted before use. That format might have been proprietary.