When I power up the camera, an image appears and

Did you try to press the info button several times? Whatch what happens on the screen, because the camera will cycle through several views.
It is in the manual, under Changing the image information display.

One answer time for a new camera the cost to repair is about the same as new.

Try NOT connecting your camera to your computer.
The best way to download pictures from your camera to your computer involves removing the memory card from the camera and plugging it into a card reader (either built-in to the computer or connected via USB or FireWire). This is likely to be faster than connecting the camera to the computer, and won't run down your camera's batteries.
Once the card is plugged in, it will appear to your computer as a removable drive. You can use the operating system's drag&drop facility to copy pictures from the card to the computer's hard drive, the same way you copy any other files. Or you can use any photo cataloging program such as Picasa ( http://picasa.google.com ).

It will be somewhere in you play back settings.

I have the same problem, and upon looking into my problem, i recall reading that Sony had used crappy glue in which they attached the CCD to the inner guts of the camera, and when that deteriorates, which doesn't take very long, then your pictures will have lines through them.

I think i remember reading that Sony said they will replace all cameras within 2 years of their manufacture. Call Sony's troubleshooting and support and they may replace it for you.

Hope i helped solve your problem.

- Josh

Usually the only time this message will appear is when you have taken the picture with another camera and try to review it on another. If this is not the issue, try formatting your card. Try another card. It may be a faulty memory card. If none of this works, call Canon tech support for free support.

we have just experienced both of the above problems. We are using 2G SD card from Kingston. After about 400 pictures set to mdeium resolution we get many pictures with the ? mark unidentified image. I see that each image takes up about 2M of space but the image information is not stored so you can not open the file. Also other images have the shaded problem as above.

does anyone have any ideas about this. Is it the camera or the SD memory? We just bought the camera about 3 weeks ago and are now thinking of returning it

Try first to reset your camera. Press the menu button, go over to setup, go down to reset, press the right arrow, highlight reset and press set. Don't worry it won't erase any of the pictures on your memory card. If that doesn't work you can try and manually set the white balance on your camera and I would recommend sending it into repairs if that doesn't work since it's taking nighttime pictures fine. :)

The date doesn't actually appear on the image. It's embedded in the data. You can see the date/time stamp by right-clicking on the image and selecting properties. You should see the date taken, date modified, etc..

You checked the obvious, lens cover? (sorry had to ask) any grinding noises when you take a picture or focus\zoom?