Zoombrowser 4.0 & network drives

[kg4fzz]

Just bought a 230 (our 4TH Powershot - others 100 - 90 - 300). Comes with the excellent ZB4.0.

Guess what: In ZB4.0 there are NO DATABASES! Fast downloads, will display/process arhived images off CDs, etc. without import & without spending hours creating DBs. Fantastic improvement (even if the Canon have not released ZB4.0 to the masses (i.e. on the Powershot website) yet! Probablynow does similar stuff to the onboard features in XP. UI is not as pretty as the old version, though; as no DB = nowwhere to store background colors etc.

Problem: As it comes, it won't see network drives (at least not in Win '98). Anyone got any ideas on how to enable this?

Thanks for any ideas!

[nomore]

I just bought the s230 too.

Although I really like the camera, the PC software is so bad that I am left very disappointed. All I want is "USB storage class" interface, i.e. ability to access camera's CF card as external hard disk. I want to be able to copy images/videos to/from CF card, that's it!

I wanted to upload to the camera a video I made a few days ago, for playback on TV, and found that there is no way to do it!

I am afraid to even imagine what previous versions must of been like, if you are saying that this version is a major improvement.

[kg4fzz]

Yes, the inability to upload movies is a bug, as the software does not recognise the file as a movie. I downloaded movies from my 90 & 230 & tried to upload both to each. The program said "image not recorded on Canon camera". Hmm, needs fixin'.

Another bug is that you can't see the main window while the camera window is open, so if you need to re-load some images by visual identification it can't be done within the software.

But this is still a much more stable version than previous ones wrt the fact that they used a very fragile database, which failed often & took hours to rebuild. However, I'm not sure that the new one offers much over the image handling native in XP. But I'm still mainly running '98 so its useful for now.

But I still can't see network drives . . . .

I hope the folks from Canon read these postings occasionally.

Harvey

[rdaigle]

I too can't see my network drive with ZB 4.0, where I keep all my digital images. I called the Canon support line and they verified that the program lacks this capability -- they said, "by design"! The only solution they offered was to use an earlier version. I asked who I could file a complaint with and they said there was no mechanism for forwarding Zoombrowser complaints to the developers. Great....I guess I will switch to BreezeBrowser.

[kg4fzz]

Thanks for calling them.

It's appalling that their customer service has no feedback mechanism, it does not show much respect for us! Maybe a few e-mails to their CTO might produce results?

They'll probably figure it out for themselves eventually & fix it. However, by then I'll probably be using the native photo features in XP, as most of my Canon-owning Microsoft neighbours already do!

In any case I need to go to faster machines & XP to solve some of the other file sharing issues I have on my home WiFi setup. So It will be bye bye ZB soon!

H

[eastavin]

in my case I have a win98SE compaq presario and none of the application software provided on ver 11 of the canon solutions disk can locate the camera or download images. All attempts to verify the driver is installed correctly seem to check out ok. Other USB products I have all work correctly when needed.

I tried the canon solutions disk on an win 2000 professional IBM thinkpad and found the software works ok when you initially install it but after you shut down and restart the camera driver needs to be reinstalled each time you want to download pictures.

There is something strange about their twain driver. USB drivers I have used for other products never showed any of these characteristics.

[Georgees]

W98 has very poor support for network drives. A program that depends on the Opsys for network drive input will just not have it in W98.

You could, I suppose build drivers to implement it in W98 but I am certain that is a very difficult and expensive under-taking.

I am a programmer and have run into this same problem while programming in W98.

People really should consider migrating to W2K or XP. These kind of things are supported in those versions. There are many other advantages to boot.

Take the plunge, upgrade. W98 is a dead horse or about to be.

Regards,

George Smith
www.ksscinc.com

[trufy]

Hi guys,

I was too, searching for a solution to access my network drives with zoombrowser 4. I found a workaround.
On W2K, point your "my documents" Folder to the Network Drive you want, thats it.

For those who d'ont know how to do that; right click the "my documents" Folder on the Desktop, click on the target tab and press "move...". Be carefull, it will move all your content of the "my documents" folder to the place you pointed before!


I think that it should be possible to add some drives on zoombrowser, i keep searching... even if i have to change the software code.


I c'ant belive that canon does not implement this feature, i think that they just "forgot" this before they left for holiday...

cheers


Trufy

[mchenry]

Interesting solution using the My Documents workaround, I am now moving my pics from the F drive to my local cdrive and have just upgraded to Ver 4.0.

I am interested in the comments that Ver 4.0 does not use any db etc, if this is the case where does it store the details of the picture, date/time etc etc

Thanks

Henry

[kg4fzz]

Thumbnails are stored in a file in each image folder called zbthumbnails, but if this is incomplete it will create them on the fly.

Date, time, device details etc. are stored in the JPEG file itself. That's why I never understood why the old ZB "database" was needed.

We are now using ZB4.1. However, 4.1 doesn't correct the network drive problem, so thanks for the "workaround".

We are Canon junkies & sold the 230 & got as S400 instead. 4MP & 3x zoom in the smallest Elf case!
I still love my Pro90 though, the IS works really well & the 370mm equivalent lens more than makes up for the lack of MP. And it cost a fraction of the digital bodies + IS lenses, & its small for what it does.

Harvey

[mchenry]

Ok, so even if I archive my photos off to a CD I will never lose the date & time details of when the pic was taken etc?

Are these details tyhat are stored in the file unique to ZoomBrowser of are other apps able to read these attributes if the files too ?

Thanks

Henry

[eddy108]

other apps able to read these attributes iof the files too

[robing]

I just got the same problem - tried zoombrowser 4 and it didn't see my photos on the network drive. I've put together a patch to one of the dll's that will get around the problem.

You need to modify the file ZbLocalVolumeDevice.dll which will probably be in C:\Program Files\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Program using a hex editor.

At offset 0xB2E4 into the file you'll find

E9 86 FE FF FF

which needs to be changed to

E9 FB 00 00 00

Now your network drives will show up (with a CDRom icon...). Don't forget to keep a backup of the original version of the file in case it all goes horribly wrong!

PS - this applies to zoombrowser version 4.0.2.120 (English) and may not work on any other versions.

[MitchF]

Robing,


Tried the hex editing, it ALMOST worked. I've got the listing of the network drives, (all with the cd-rom icon, very cute!) but they basically show up as empty, cannot view any files or folders within here. They just show up as the drives with the + next to them, but trying to expand the drives results in no folders being shown under them.


Any tips?


Cheers!
Mitch

[m_fl]

Robing,

great job. Thanks for this path. Helped me a lot!