HALP!!

[lilyofshalott]

GAAAAHH!! Did I already post about my shiny new MacBook? Or is that in the entry I've been meaning to write up (including a Silly Poll of Much Randomness) and haven't gotten to yet (must do that tomorrow)? I've been working on the long process of transfering my IE favourites (yes, I know I should really switch to Firefox) on my PC to a Word document so I can add them to my Firefox favourites on my Mac (also need to lean Firefox). This, as you can imagine, is quite tedious. I therefore thought I should do something today that was still moving things from one computer to another but didn't involve endless copy/pasting. Of course, I figured transferring my pictures from my digital camera would be fairly simple. ::facepalm::

The first spot of trouble occurred when I attempted to install the photo software that came with my camera (a Nikon Coolpix L3)—I was able to install the bits I didn't ever use on my PC, but not PictureProject, which is the main programme. I figured this would be okay as iPhoto seems to have importing capabilities. I happily plugged my camera (her name is Jane, by the way) into my laptop and started importing. As I have a very-nearly-full 1GB memory card and importing would take a while, I thought I would close the screen a bit so I wouldn't be seeing the pictures flash by—I had both computers turned on and was going to go back to working on the PC (where I was already listening to iTunes). I remembered when I had the screen almost closed that Macs sleep when their screens are closed (or is this a general laptop thing?), so I quickly opened the screen again. The "thinking" circle had started spinning, so I waited for about a minute and then force quit iPhoto because it said it wasn't responding. After reopening iPhoto, I was able to re-import the pictures that had been saved on the laptop before the application froze on me. I tried importing the rest of the pictures, but iPhoto froze on me again. This is about when I started panicking. I decided I really ought to disconnect my camera, but didn't know where to look for the icon on a Mac so I headed to Apple's support page. Looking back at the iPhoto screen, there wasn't an icon that showed it was recognising my camera (there had been when I had imported the other pictures); according to iPhoto, my camera wasn't connected. More panicking. I couldn't see any other way to disconnect my camera, so I unplugged it. Very, very bad, I know, but there wasn't anything for me to click on to disconnect it properly! I then tried turning the camera off, thinking I'd see if turning it off and then back again would help things.

IT.WON'T.TURN.OFF. ::flails:: Pressing the On/Off button does nothing. Pressing the button to take pictures does nothing. I just tried the rest of the buttons and none of them do anything, either. The screen is also black. The camera is *still* on and it's been about 30 minutes since I started writing this (right after the initial bout of "I think I broke my camera!! O_O" panicking)—generally it turns itself off after a few minutes of me not doing anything with it.

Does anyone have any idea what I should do? I tried my user manual but nothing in the troubleshooting section was helpful, especially as I'm not even sure exactly what's wrong. Do I take out the batteries and see if that does anything? (Why does technology often hate me?) Please tell me I didn't accidentally break my camera . . . HALP!!

ETA: It's half-one and the camera is *still* on. O_O

Comments

[petitmayfaircat.livejournal.com]

Holy wow! I know I sometimes have trouble transferring pictures from my camera, but I just start over and that's worked so far. I'm sorry, but I can only offer two suggestions, and I'm sure you've thought of one of them. Have you called the customer service numbers for your camera and your computers? Or checked for help at the websites? Two, have you ever used a portable USB port for transferring files from one computer to another? That's what my son and I use. He has an HP and I have a Toshiba laptop. They come in a variety of gigabyte sizes and they are surprisingly quick.

Good luck!

[lilyofshalott]

The odd thing is that I have never had trouble doing this with my current (desktop) computer--I'd just get my cables, attach my camera to my computer, and transfer the pictures. Simple!

My mom and I are going to the mall this weekend, so I'm planning on taking my camera with me and asking people at the electronics stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.)--hopefully they'll be able to help out. In the meantime, I think I'll save the pictures on my desktop to a disk (which I'd been planning on doing anyway) and transfer them to the new laptop that way. Luckily, all the pictures on my camera's memory are on my other computer!

[petitmayfaircat.livejournal.com]

That sounds good. Hope everything works out for you!

Good luck!