Digital Camera problem with USB & Firewire

I'm having trouble downloading pictures to my iMac G5. I have a Canon Powershot Pro 1 and I've tried linking it via USB to the back of my iMac using the cord that came with it and I've tried putting the CF card into a Firewire CF card reader that I have. I'm using Canon Imagebrowser and it seems like whenever the computer realizes that there is a camera attached it crashes (Locks up, grey screen scrolls down with that I need to restart my computer).

I've used this camera/ iMac/ software combination many times before and it has worked seamlessly. What could be causing this to happen? As a side note I recently had problems with a Epson scanner that was hooked up via USB (I returned the scanner). Could there be something wrong with my USB ports? Is this an instance where I need to repair permissions or something like that? I have a printer, Umax scanner hooked up via USB and a LaCie 250 GB drive and my iPod hooked up via Firewire. Could there be some sort of conflict between the various devices?

I'm completely baffled. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in Advance for your help.

rk

 

Printer works fine as does the scanner except for a lack of driver (Umax doesn't make one for OSX, I'm waiting to get Silverfast).

The CF card reads and writes perfectly, no problem there.

The LaCie drive is Firewire and I've daisy chained the CF reader off of that. I have my iPod plugged into the other Firewire port.

I've already tried unplugging all other USB devices and attaching only the camera via USB, no luck (CRASH).

I haven't had any problems with the software before. It's a clean install off of the disk.

I'm going to try and run repair Permissions. Any other advice?

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the help.

rk

 

OK, ran "repair permissions" out of Disk Utility" and still no luck, big fat crash as soon as I put the CF card in the reader. Here's the real crux of the problem, I have my wife's PC laptop sitting right here on the desk next to my iMac. I'm sure if I plug the camera into the laptop it's going to work and I can burn a disk and get the images into the iMac that way, but I don't want to. That would put a big "L" in the iMac column and a "W" in the piece of garbage Sony PC column and I would have to concede to my wife that maybe Macs aren't that great and PC' s are better.

So basically it's a battle of platforms that I don't want my iMac to lose. Please help.

Thanks again in advance.
rk

 

Tried that and same as before, as soon as I insert the CF card the computer crashes. I know it's not the card, what could be wrong with my computer?

Thanks,
rk

 

Thanks for the help

After around two or three hours of online chatting with Apple tech support last night, we figured out that it was a user specific problem by setting up a test user account. The Apple tech agent suggested I drag the preferences folder from my user account Library folder to the desktop and restart which I did and there was no problem, the camera connected fine.I've since copied most of my user preferences back into the Library/ Preference folder and my iMac is back to running the way I like it. I think there was some sort of driver conflict with an epson scanner driver I installed (for a scanner I never could get to work, an Epson 2480).

Anyway, I highly recommend Apple online chat support to any iMac users who are having difficulties. They were very nice and helpful. It's only available to iMac users (I think they're testing the effectiveness of this type of support) and it's free. Go to http://www.apple.com/support/imac/ and click on "chat with a support agent".

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Cheers.
rk