[Goosegirl]

OH got a Canon IXUS 285HS to take pics when we went on our cruise. Having printed out the whole 80 page manual I finally found how to do it somewhere near the end. I followed the instructions to download the software from the Canon site (one's for the camera and the other's a map jobbie) and think I got them installed because the map jobbie icon appeared on my desktop but the camera part didn't. I looked in downloads and found it was a zipped file so looked up how to un-zip it. I moved it from its folder onto my desktop and the kilobytes changed to megabytes so thought I'd got it sorted. Having checked that the camera lead was working with my camera, I attached it to his and switched it on. I didn't get the camera window as shown in the manual and my PC doesn't recognise it.  This is the title of the camera software: dcsw-7-1-0-1-9l. I've just checked it is installed so haven't a clue what's happening. If you know how to sort it out please keep it simple!

[DanielCoffey]

In theory, whenever you plug a new camera into Windows via USB it should sort it out for you and just open the Windows Photo app without needing anything else. It may ask you want you want to do the very first time when you first plug it in such as "Open in Photo app" or "Open in File Explorer" or "Do Nothing".

You ought to see a list of what it found on the camera. By default when you allow Windows to import the photos it will put them in the Pictures folder sorted by year or month according to what you selected and leave the originals behind on the camera but there is an option in Import Settings to Delete After Import. For some bizarre reason it never remembers that setting.

[Goosegirl]

Thanks Daniel. When I plug my camera in and switch it on the camera screen shows "Access" and then I get a window with options to download whatever I want. With his, I did the same but all I got was just what you normally see when you switch a camera on. I did order a connecting cable as I wasn't sure if mine was the right one but as it fitted I thought it was ok, but yesterday when I examined it I thought it was a tiny bit loose even though it was plugged in properly. When the cable arrives I'll have another go. It's just the camera software that's puzzling me as it's supposed to be automatically installed but I can't seem to access it.

[DanielCoffey]

It looks like your camera model has some sort of wireless connectivity to a PC so that may be what the software is for. It looks like many people have trouble using it and the advice seems to be to contact Canon UK support.

In theory you can just pick up the camera without a cable, go to a menu on the camera and "share" the pictures with the PC over your wifi providing the PC is listening for it. That is what the software is supposed to handle.

I have a similar function on my camera but don't use it. I could not get it working reliably anyway and didn't like the idea of something on my PC listening for devices all the time. I ended up taking out the SD card which was easy and popping it directly into a small SD card reader which plugs into a spare USB port on my keyboard. No fiddly cables.

[Goosegirl]

Ah, so the DS card can be inserted into any spare USB port. I didn't know what so I'll try it tomorrow and see what happens.

[DanielCoffey]

I have a little SD card reader by Kingston that I use. The model is something like MobileLite G4 and it was pretty cheap.