Message: Memory Card Error - Memory Card Parameter Error on 4gb SDHC card

Dear,

First of all you need to confirm that what kind of memory card your are using. The officially recommended type and brands are here

Toshiba *SD Memory Card - Capacities: 512MB to 2GB *SDHC Memory Card - Capacities: 4GB to 32GB


Panasonic *SD Memory Card - Capacities: 512MB to 2GB *SDHC Memory Card - Capacities: 4GB to 32GB

SanDisk *SD Memory Card - Capacities: 512MB to 2GB *SDHC Memory Card - Capacities: 4GB to 32GB

rather than these might be problematic or not compatible...
Check this first

Best of luck!

4GB "SD" cards are almost always actually SDHC (high capacity) cards. SD and SDHC cards fit the same slots, but they are slightly different electrically. Many cameras won't work with SDHC cards. SDHC is not backwards compatible.

So your camera is not able to use the 4GB card, and is ignoring it and using internal memory only. That memory is tiny and won't hold many pictures, and when it is full, the camera cannot work at all. You need to delete the pics in the internal memory and get a memory card your camera can understand (2GB or less).

Could be it only supports SD cards up to 2gb but not SDHC.

Hi - You will need to get an SDHC reader and then try the following procedure.

You can either plug in you camera to the PC as it should appear as a “Removable Drive” or put the card in a card reader attached to your PC.

Next, if you are comfortable with using a PC then you can download a FREE utility that will recover your photos from the following link:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

If you need something a little more "user friendly" then you will need to buy the software. If you search the web for photo recovery software you will find many.
One I have used successfully is RescuePro that used to be bundled with some Sandisk products. Now you can get it from the link below:

http://www.lc-tech.com/software/prwindetail.html

You can try the demo to see what you can recover before buying.

Remember - Do NOT try & write anything back to the card until you can recover your pictures to your PC safely!

Please take a moment to rate this solution & let us know if the information given was useful to you – Good Luck!

Informatica

Sorry for the extreme delay in answering your question: I've been trawling for old unanswered questions today and yours came up. The following answer will undoubtedly be way too late to be of use to you, but may assist others searching FixYa for an answer to the same problem.

You have been mistaking SD cards for SDHC cards. They look the same but are different, and your camera cannot use SDHC cards as it was designed before they existed. The limitation is due to the hardware in your camera so it cannot be updated to SDHC standards.

Your 2GB card was definitely an SD card as SDHC cards have a minimum capacity of 4GB, and 2GB SD cards are the maximum capacity which your camera can handle. Your only fix is to either stick to 2GB maximum capacity SD cards or to replace the camera with one which is SDHC compatible.

I had exactly the same problem with a 2 year old LX-1. The card worked fine on the computer, formated no problem but would not work in the camera.
I took a can of air and used maybe 3 one second bursts to blow out the card slot. Card immediately started working.

-prmolina

I have been rummaging around trying to find two solutions: 1) to get my Toshiba Satellite card reader to read SDHC cards and 2) to get my desktop USB ports to read SDHC cards. While MS offers a hotfix for XP, it does not always work because of the different Chip Sets in computers. I have also read where posters say that the SDHC card works in the compter NOW, but NOW will not work in the camera... and the SDHC card NOW works in the camera but will NOT work in the computer.... I found a tekkie article that may help clear the air... SDHC cards are formatted in Fat32x (NOTICE the "x") and SD cards are formatted in Fat32 (no 'x') and these compatibility problems arise when the user unwittingly or unknowingly RE-formats the SDHC card, either when it is put in the computer and won't read or when it is put in the camera and won't read... but just don't bother to mention that THAT is what they did upon inserting the card and only proceeded to complain about an apparent incompatibility. The camera or computer might even mislead you asking if you want to format the card..... but all is not lost. The Panasonic site gives a program AND a pdf instruction book on How To ReFormat an SD or SDHC card specifying the proper Fat32x or Fat32 format. Hope this helps.

I recently bought a DMC-TZ3 and have been researching memory cards. Several sites sell cards with the camera and list the card type. I would suggest buying one of these cards. Any cards larger than 2gb must be SDHC type SD cards. There appear to different types of SDHC cards, 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. Check out Wikipedia.org for a description. 2.0 cards are not compatable for devices developed prior to 2.0 so that may be the reason for the camera problem. So far I haven't seen anything that states what type SDHC card the camera requires. I found a computer memory site that that sells memory that they say will work. There may be others.
http://www.mymemory.co.uk/compatible-memory/Digital_Cameras/Panasonic/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-TZ3

You may fix the memory card error and recover your files by follow this memory card recovery guide which helped me last time:
Fix memory card error and recover data from memory card
good luck!

Hmmm, I'm thinkin' if there's no memory card in camera, there are NO memories, aka formerly known as photos. Unless there is some sort of an internal memory, but me thinks not. As for error message, might be because....card fell out while an image was being captured.