Picture error and loss of pictures taken

Olympus IR-300 with Fuji XD-card, 256MB. Camera sometimes just stops and closes, saying "picture error". I cannot look at the pictures nor download them. To keep taking pictures I need to reformate the XD-card. But then I loose the pictures of cours. Why?

I am having the same problem with my Olympus Stylus 790SW. Not the same camera, but also an Olympus using the x-D card.

When I use a USB Card Reader (Lexar USB 2.0 Mult-Card Reader), my computer will recognize that there are photos on the card. I attempt to download them and after a short while errors begin to pop up saying that the data is corrupted or not readable.

I then remove the card reader from the computer and place the x-D card back in the camera and find that the pictures are now gone and the camera is giving me two options: 1. "clean the card" or 2. "format the card". I don't want to format the card because I don't want to lose my photos. I removed the card and wiped it with a dry cloth and tried it in the camera again, but continued to receive the same error message.

However, when I use the supplied USB cable that came with the camera and connect the camera directly to the computer, I have no problems with uploading images. It appears to only be a problem when using the card reader.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there a way to recover the photos from the x-D card? In the future, I will not use the card reader, but I would really like to recover the 200+ photos that I had taken at Christmas with my family.