xD card user not getting the picture

Q We have an Olympus camera that uses an xD memory card. We hooked up the camera to our TV by cable to view pictures of a trip to Washington, D.C. It worked great until something happened that seems to have erased or formatted the card. Now we can't find the pictures on it. What can we do?

GERRY BURMEISTER, COSMOS, MINN.

A Several programs can recover photos from what appears to be an empty flash memory card. For a list, see tinyurl.com/2or8y3. Because the xD card is not widely used, be sure to select a compatible program, such as the $29.95 MediaRecover 4.0 for Windows.

Alternatively, if you suspect the camera or cable could be at fault, you could try to read the memory card in another device, such as the $10 Olympus xD card reader (called the MAUSB-500 USB Memory Adapter) that plugs into a USB port on your PC. If the memory card is undamaged, you should be able to view your photos on the PC.

Q I have a new computer with Windows 7 and get my e-mail through Windows Live Mail. But I can't seem to open a type of e-mail attachment that I regularly opened with my old Windows XP PC. Now I get the message "This file does not have a program associated with it." What should I do?

RON KLEIN, SOUTH HAVEN, MINN.

A In order to open an attachment, you must have a program on your computer that can read that type of file.

Find the file type of your attachment in the list, and double-click it to get a list of the programs on your PC that can open that file. Choose one, and e-mail attachments of that type will be opened by that software in the future. If there aren't any programs that can open the file, you'll have to buy some software.

Note that in some cases, more than one program can be used. If you don't have Microsoft Word, you can still read Word files with the WordPad program located in the Accessories folder.

Note that Windows Live Mail automatically prevents you from receiving or sending certain file attachments, such as those ending in .exe (designating a program), because they might contain malicious software. To view those messages, override the security settings. See tinyurl.com/yed6jjk.