Hi, I'm posting on behalf of my brother in-law. I'm the computer savy one in the family so everyone seems to turn to me for help. I hate it when it's some weird problem.

Bottom line: He took some pictures with his Panasonic Lumix digital camera. He sticks the SD card in his computer and 1/2 of the pictures are visible as thumbnails and can be opened, the other 1/2 cannot be recognized.

The weird thing is: He puts the card back in his camera and all the pictures are visible.

So he took some more pictures... 100% of these are un-readable on the computer.

I'm assuming his pictures aren't a total loss, if his camera can see them. What should we do? He lives 2hours away and has dialup, so any suggestions that he can try without some large program download? I guess I could get him to upload me one of them, but that might take hours too

Thanks for the help in advance.

Has he tried to connect the camera directly to the computer via USB, rather than (as I assume he is doing) inserting the SD card into a card reader?

If not, he may need to visit some sites and do some downloading for the next test.

P.S. If he can afford it, tell him to ditch dialup and get at the very least DSL. Dialup is something I simply can't stand the speed of, and no matter how much you use the computer, it will be worth it, and you won't be wasting hours collectively of your life waiting for something to load, when you could be wasting only seconds. Trust me, if I could blame dialup for this issue, I would. The thing is, I can't, so I'm just going to suggest you have him get it, for the sake of his own soul.

Sorry for the rant, I tend to do that... increasingly often.

No, I don't think he has tried that. I'll suggest it.

Believe me.. .being their tech support person I am frustrated with the dialup. But they live on a farm where there is no way to get DSL or cable. They hate dialup too, but are waiting the day for DSL to reach them.

Man... that sucks big time. If I lived somewhere were I couldn't get cable, I'd probably find a cable company's building off wherever it is and more or less drag them to the house, and take an extra-long wire with me.