Thumbnails OK, pictures not!

[The Pie not the Guy]

Hello everyone. I'm fairly new to digital cameras. If there is a way to fix what I am going to describe, great, but really I'm hoping that someone can explain this to me so that I understand it. I have a SanDisk 256mb SD card with approx. 400 photos on it. It was formatted in the camera, a Samsung Digimax. When I put the card in my card reader and tell Windows Explorer to open file for viewing, all of the thumbnails look fine. When I copied all of the photos to a CD, however, I discovered 2 corrupted images (in one half the pic is grayed out, in the other blocks of the image are shifted and missing colors.) I put the card back in the card reader, and again the thumbnails look fine, but if I right-click and choose "refresh thumbnail" then I see the corruption. I have tried reading the card using CardRecovery 2.31 by WinRecovery (evaluation version), and all I get are the corrupted photos. What I really don't understand is where the good thumbnails come from whenever I put the card into the reader, and why there is no way to generate a complete photo from those thumbnails. If anyone can explain this mystery to me, I would sure love to know. Thanks much.

[AlexMonro]

Can you view the "corrupted" images OK in the camera? If so, it may be some kind of problem with your card reader.

Have you tried connecting the camera via the USB cable (assuming it has a USB interface, I'm not familiar with the Samsung Digimax, but most modern cameras have a USB connection)?

[Rhys]

I have a couple of elderly 64mb CF cards that do this and worse. I'm in touch with Fuji as one is Fuji and has a lifetime warranty. I reckon it's a card that's gone bad.

[The Pie not the Guy]

Alex, I liked the idea and tried it. I told Windows Explorer "Take No Action" and then used My Computer to treat the camera like a drive. The thumbnails looked fine, but when I opened the photos/files, they were corrupted. I also tried copying to a folder on the computer. The thumbnails there looked fine as well, but same corruption when opening. So I guess unless there is some different recovery software I should try, these two are goners. Thanks Alex and Ryhs for replying.