Picture Saving and USB Problems

[Feret]

I'm hoping one of you computer gurus out there may be able to give me some assistance.

When I attempt to save, for example, a JPG picture/cartoon from a website by right clicking on it then left clicking "Save Picture As" (or by "File" and "Save As"), the Save Picture window displays -

File Name: "untitled"
Save As Type: "Bitmap (*.bmp)"

There is no other Type option. This means I have to convert the file type back to JPG by "Picture It" to save it and view it. I went back to IE5.5 then reverted to IE6 as it had no effect on the problem.

This problem became evident after a series of lockups and a crash during unsuccessful attempts to install USB support for a Fuji digital camera. Further attempts to install a USB Reader have also failed. The system locks up when installing the Mass Storage after the new hardware has been detected, in both cases. Manual installation attempts failed also. BTW, I've tried all 3 spare USB ports, the mouse uses the 4th.

Syst Specs: P4 1.7, 512mb Ram, 20gig HDD, Windows 2000Pro, NAV 2001, IE6.

Cheers.

[Carpet Rodent]

Feret: Here's some tips for your lock-up problems. It would appear that you have interrupt conflicts, probably from when you installed the USB ports. These are now using the same interrupts as one or more other devices. If you can, go to the System Devices in the Control Panel (you'll need Administrator privledges to do this) and have a look at the device profiles. This should give you info on which devices are conflicting. You can then change the interrupt settings so that there are no conflicts.

If this doesn't work, the only other option I can suggest is copying off files you wish to keep (pictures, documents etc) and re-installing. Not the sort of thing you want to hear I know, but...

[Feret]

Thankyou for your suggestions, Carpet Rodent, but unfortunately no conflictions are evident. After having gone through the file saving exercise quite recently to install 2000Pro, I think I will hang off now until Optus Cable decide to support XP then go to XP Pro.

To get around the file saving problem from the Web, I have to constantly delete the Temporary Internet Files. This is a known problem according to MSDN. Hopefully the OS upgrade (change?) will cure both of my problems.

Cheers.

[Andrew Cant]

Feret,

The "Save As" feature is only a "copy to local drive" action. This cannot change file format so maybe you are actually downloading bitmaps (especially if you need to use Picture It to change to a JPG). As a test, use windows explorer to rename the file to a .jpg extension (you may need to enable file extension viewing in the windows explorer options), then open the file and if you get an error, you know it was a bitmap file originally, so no need to fret.

Regarding the USB install hangs, try installing the drivers and software PRIOR to connecting the device to your machine. You would be surprised just how many devices have this problem. Think yourself lucky, if you were running windows 98, that crash could have been a full o/s meltdown.

Hope this helps.

[Feret]

FBW,

Installing the software first had no effect either, alas. The system just locked up during USB Mass Storage download. I could lash out and buy a FD-A2 floppy adapter to access my 128MB cards but they are not cheap here. Currently I download to a laptop and retrieve the files from there. Bit more mucking around, that's all.

The pic files I have been attempting to save are definitely JPG and GIF as I have checked the properties and I have other computers networked. As I mentioned above, as soon as I delete my Temporary Internet Files it returns to normal (for a while). I am led to believe there is something, somewhere on MSDN, re having the disk space set too high. That apparently can possibly cause the problem. I have mine set at 64 MB at present but how low do you go?

Thanks for your interest.

Cheers.