Help needed with connecting to computer

I am certain this question has been posed on multiple occasions already, but I couldn't find anything with the search engine, so sorry if I overlooked anything. Here goes:

I recently acquired a Powershot A-640 and with it, the Digital Solutions v29 bundled software. Everything seemed great until I tried to download my pics to my Win XP (SP2) computer after installing the Dig. Sol. program, at which point the ZoomBrowserEX flatly informed me that it "Cannot detect camera". Furthermore, although the XP seemed to have installed drivers for the camera (and it showed in the Control Panel too, under Scanners and Cameras - not sure that's the Englis variant, mine's Hungarian- and in the System subsection under Imaging Devices), I can't seem to be able to find it anywhere in the Removable Devices section either. This means I have no means to extract my pics from the camera which puts me into quite a predicament. I would appreciate any help you might give, so thanks in advance
P.S.:only threads I found wich looked like they would answer my questions turned out to be 2+ years old and dealt with Win 2000 and ME...

Is the camera in "Display" mode?

Yep, and that causes it to put itself into some kind of a freeze - although I guess that might be OK, not sure how it should respond to beign conencted - which means it doesn't react to any buttons pressed, and switches off the LCD display after a while. The frustrating thing is: i tried it at my friend's place and he managed to get it running in 1 minute under Win Vista - so I guess its not the problem of the camera, but my Windows

P.S.: I believe I should point out that this is my first-ever digicam, meaning I might overreact perfectly normal things. Howevr, I'm pretty sure I should not have so much difficulty with simple downloading, so that's a definite problem

this may sound real simple ... have you rebooted your computer? (sorry I know its simple)

I have an A630 (basically the same camera) on XP SP2 and all is well

Try this
disconnect and reboot.
reconnect camera (w/camera power down).
turn camera on.
you hear a tone from the computer letting you know a device is being connected.
If you didn't then check in control panel/scanner & camera see if the A630 is listed if not then you have not connected to the computer.
Check device manager and see if you have any unknow device (exclamation mark) listed if you do then turn off the camera and remove the unknown device.
Disconnect the camera again and reboot.
reconnect the camera and turn it on and listen again for tone and look at the start bar to see if it has detect a new device and installing the device.

If the above don't work then uninstall the software completely and check make sure there is no unknown device is installed. reboot reinstall software and connect and turn on the camera.

If it still don't work spend $10 and do yourself a favor get a card reader. You won't regret it.

lostdoggy wrote in post #2511007
If it still don't work spend $10 and do yourself a favor get a card reader. You won't regret it.

Exactly, only do it first (before you try to connect the camera to the PC) and save yourself a lot of frustration. For some reason Canon choose not to make its cameras behave like a normal USB piece of equipment should - I gave up on this very quickly. A simple card reader will do this job much better.

Actually, I purchased a reader today right after school (meanign 2 hours ago), because I read earlier that it acn make life way easier, just wanted to know if any of you guys had a solution because it IS frustrating that you can't make this thing work like it should... Btw doggy, I tried all possible configurations you listed already, and the computer DOES in fact detect the camera as "Canon Digital Camera" and I have the beep and all, even the Device Manager lists it as connected right, but the software still can't detect it... I guess the software must have something against my Windows
Anyways, thank you all for helping out, I appreciate it