MBPros not recognising camera / cf card, PC is

[threeisles]

Hi there,

I have a Canon EOS 50 which has a CF card - I normally connect this to our macbook pros with a crd reader via usb. Alternatively, I connect the camera directly. This has worked fine for a number of years.

Yesterday, something started to go wrong.

I was connecting the card to download photos - at first it recognised the card as an external drive, but was taking ages to read the photos. Then it flashed an error message up that it couldn't read the format of the disk (it had previously for about a year!).

Now when I connect the card via either reader or by connection to the camera, it doesn't recognise the card at all.

I tried this on both my mac book pros we own. Same issues.
Canon HD camcorder connects absolutely fine via usb, as does Ipod - so it isn't the usb port.

I think the cards are ok- (same issue with two different CF cards)

The camera connected no problem to my brother-in-law's vista machine, and downloaded the image files.

I tried connection with two different usb cables as well.

Any ideas as to what has happened? Could it be a mac software update?

Thanks,

ThreeIsles