Write Protect

[Burkwood]

Heya, im new here; sorry if this is obvious or has already been discussed!

I own an olympus Camedia D-390 and use an xd picture card (16mb) recently I tried to take a picture but when I slid back the cover it comes up with the error message "Write Protect" I have looked in the manual and all it says it that my cameras write protect feature has been enabled by a pc; connect it to a pc and turn this off. Just one problem....How???

I have trid connecting it tothe pc and changing the attributes of the folders;but everytime I take off the "read only setting" it just reverts back to it.

Help!!!

[tsiya]

I don't know if You have all the literature for Your camera, Olympus usually puts out a short version, and a more detailed one. Try http://www.starbatteries.com/olcad3c1dica.html or the Oly website. I am not familar with the 390, suspect some setting is incorrect. Have You tried leaving the batteries out long enough for it to return to defaults? Give it several hours, see what it does.
http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v244/tsiya/

[Burkwood]

Thanks forthelink but I have already read through it and all it says is; use a pc to disable it.

Thanks tho

Anybody else have any ideas?

[chaz]

Did you ever get an answer on how to fix this? I have an Olympus C5060 and have encountered the same problem. I cannot format the card from my PC due to the write-protect, and if I format the card with the camera, the write-protect remains.

Thanks.
Chaz

[Burkwood]

I heard from a guy on another forum that i need to contatc olympus....something about xp photo transfer. Havent had a chance yet

[curlypooh]

I have an Olympus c750 and in the long version of the manual it says that the card must be unlocked just like you said. I think that you have to view the image or images on the card on your pc, right click on the image/s and highlight "properties", check to see if the box is checked "protected". If so, uncheck it and apply this to any and all images on the card. Something must have made the card write protected and you will not even be able to format it with the protection in place.

[ning]

This has happened to me too. My camera (Olympus C-450Z / D-565) won't write to my 512MB xD card (very expensive!). The LEDs by the viewfinder just blink at me. My PC reads the card (in a card reader, not the camera), but it won't write anything to the card or format it - just pops up 'disk is write protected'. I've tracked it down to the DCIM folder - if I try to copy this folder (which is empty, btw) to the PC, I get another error: "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." Scandisk reports no problems with the card. Can anyone recommend any low-level card writing utilities or anything?

cheers

ning

[ning]

Update: I sent the card to a Fujifilm repair centre (here in the UK) and they either fixed the problem or sent me a new card (I'm not sure which because I hadn't written anything on the card). They were very helpful and quick - I would recommend this.

cheers

ning

[pauliaK]

The same s**t to me with my 128MB xD card

Originally posted by curlypooh
I think that you have to view the image or images on the card on your pc, right click on the image/s and highlight "properties", check to see if the box is checked "protected". If so, uncheck it and apply this to any and all images on the card.

I can't even pres right mouse button, nothing happens I don't know what i need to do HELP!

[tsiya]

Originally posted by pauliaK
The same s**t to me with my 128MB xD card

I can't even pres right mouse button, nothing happens I don't know what i need to do HELP!

Pauliak, what operating system do you have?

[pauliaK]

Originally posted by tsiya
Pauliak, what operating system do you have?

Ms Windows XP SP2

[pauliaK]

qq

[TexasBears]

I know this is a bit late from the original question, but hopefully someone will find this answer and have less grief than I have experienced When you have a xd card that is write protected left click on the card icon to get to its first subfolder... right click on this and you will notice it is has the "read only" radio button selected. Unselect it and click apply. It will ask if you want to apply this to all sub folders and files select yes. And walla ... you no longer get the annoying write protect message when your trying to down load the pics off your card.

[roman]

hi there,

this is what happened to me:
My xd card got infected with some virus (connecting the camera to some dodgy pc on a holiday).
after the viruses have been detected on other pc, and removed, the card was showing write protected error.
My biggest concern was that I loose my photos. At first I was unable to copy them, unable to view the content of the folder with pics, unable to do anything ... I was getting that stupid message.

Luckily, I managed to do a backup using window's standard backup tool. There it allowed me to access the folder with my photos and do the backup
Right click when viewing the card (connected to pc in a card reader) > properties > 'tools' tab > backup now...

it is pretty straightforward, just follow the wizard steps.

after this I formatted the card using my camera. It did not help, card was not working in the camera. Viewing it in the pc, there was no content, no folders (of course). I tried to create manually "DCIM" folder, but it gave me an error that this folder already exists (although I could not see it). I tried to remove the checkbox for "Read only" (as also mentioned above by TexasBears), clicked ok, but it always reverted back to the previous setting with that checkbox ticked, and also the camera was showing the same message, of course. Obviously the issue was to be much more serious than that.
(in standard situation with "Read only" checkbox ticked it would allow me to copy the pictures ....

Then I tried to format the card in pc. Click "Start" > click "Run..." > type 'cmd' and hit enter.
Run the following command: format g:
...if 'g' is the drive letter assigned to your card in the card reader ... be careful here !!!
It allowed me to format the card unlike the other attempts (unlike the right click when viewing the card content > 'format ...' from the menu, these attempts were giving me that stupid write protected error)

Before I inserted the card back to the camera, I created "DCIM" folder manually. I inserted it into camera then, and voila, it works !!!

You may try to insert the card without creating the DCIM folder manually (after the format from the command line). The camera should create it automatically I suppose. I'm not going to corrupt my card just to test this other scenario !!

Please do let me know if you need some more details. I'm pretty sure these steps should solve most of "write-protected" issues.