I've been using my NV-GS100K a fair amount recently, not only for video but for still images and voice recording. I have three SD cards for the latter two functions, the 16MB one that came with the camera and two 256MB cards I bought. At two recent sessions I used the two larger cards, one for each session. After copying the image files to my hard disk, I went to copy the sound files to the computer -- a more time-consuming procedure, since it involves playing the sound files back through the AV output and recording them on the computer to MP3 format.

But when I fire up the camera now, the sound files don't show up -- nothing, nada, zip! Instead of seeing the ordinary blue screen and the number of the particular sound file, the LCD is black, with dashes where the various numbers should be and no indication of any sound files. This only happens with the two larger cards, the ones I've been using -- the 16MB card has some old sound files on it, and everything there works OK.

So, there's something wrong with the two sound cards. The only thing I've done to the computer since copying the image files over is the installation of Norton Anti-Virus 9.0 (I'm on a Mac, running OS 10.2.8). OK, so I'm thinking, maybe allowing NAV to check the SD cards for viruses put something on the cards, some file that the Panny doesn't like?

But I've searched everywhere, using the Terminal to reveal hidden files. I've checked every which way, comparing what's on the different cards, and I can't see anything out of place. There are no new files in any of the directories except .DS_Store files, and I've tried copying them out and back in without any changes in the camera's behavior.

I'm at my wits' end. Any suggestions?

John, I don't use voice recording, so this may be way off the mark. But, to start, are the two large cards Panasonic SD cards like the one that came with your cam, or are they multimedia cards? I'm just wondering if Norton would, for some reason, have affected them differently because of a different directory structure. In any case, have you tried just disabling the Norton software to see if you can at least get files to download? (I don't think many people use Norton any more, but it's probably best to check in the mac forum on these boards re that issue.)

Whether you are able to retrieve the files or not, you can still restore the usability of the cards, I believe, by using the reformat function on the cam. Sorry not to be able to offer more help.

Well, I've made some progress.

I can copy the sound files over to the 16MB card, and play back the recordings into Audio Recorder on the Mac, which produces MP3 files. Because of the space limitations, I need to do it in chunks -- and if I'm working in the middle of the recording session, I can fool the index files into thinking everything's OK by adding zero-length files. If anyone wants a more detailed explanation of that... ?

Incidentally, I've copied all the files, from all the three SD cards, over to my hard disk. Nothing I can do has made it possible to play the voice recordings off of the two larger cards -- believe me, I've tried every delete/copy operation I could think of. Nor have I been able to figure out what's wrong with those cards -- perhaps Norton Anti-Virus puts some sort of "I've checked this disk" message in the FAT on the disk. I can deal with hidden files, which I can see with the Unix terminal. Sometime I'll fire up VirtualPC and see if I can wipe the disk clean with that...

In response to Patricia's comment -- I've disabled Norton for the moment. And the cards are certainly usable; I've checked in a couple of ways, and after having the camera format them, they work just fine. I just can't copy the old sound files back onto them and get them to play that way. Which is wierd.