Trying to get some snaps of the SD card onto the PC. As soon as I try and open any 'other device' it causes explorer to become unstable and crash. Bottom task bar vanishes, and I'm unable to open the SD card.

Edit: all icons have vanished from the desktop, and the task/windows start up list has also gone. Already restarted it twice..

Any idea as to why?

Not sure as to why but you can force explorer to restart quite easily.
Open up task manager (Usually Ctrl+Alt+Dlt)
Click on the processes tab and then go to file > New Task and type explorer.exe

This will reload the start menu and desktop items so you should be able to access the card.

Hope it helps

Will give it a go in a tick, thanks.

It's pretty odd as the PC is pretty new as is the camera SD card..

Took the card out after getting task manager up, and low and behold everything went back to normal.

Hmmm

Perhaps there is an error on the SD card, or it needs scanning to check for errors. I had somehting similar last week. Put some pics on it for my old man and then when he tried to extract it said the card was corrupted and needed formatting. In the end had to format and recover the images manually. Have you tried connecting the camera direct, to check that it can read the card properly?

That worked fine earlier, but I didn't save all the images. Battery ran flat when I went to re-connect, so just decided to use the SD slot on the tower that I'd not used prior to now.

Batteries are now charging, so will commence uploading tommorow. 😛

I'll have fiddle around anyway, thanks for the advice sir!

As I understand it, Explorer is notoriously flaky at the best of times. Have you tried using any other photo management software? I'm not familiar with Windows, but there must be freeware available that will do the job. How about Picasa?

There is an issue with explorer showing previews of .avi video that will cause it to crash.
If you have taken and short videos with your camera it may be these that are causing the problem.

I don't have an easy answer for you but google should help.
You can turn off preview for instance.

Simply do the following steps:
1) Open a command window (Start->Run, type in 'cmd' hit enter)
2) To remove image preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll
3) To readd image preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 shimgvw.dll
4) To remove media preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll
5) To readd media preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 shmedia.dll

Try 2) and 4)
Use 3) and 5) to put things back as they were.

Use it plugged into you camera sounds like the inbuilt reading is broke.

I bought a new PC and the card reader slot didn't work from new – had to get a new one fitted. It could be that, rather than the card.

I'd see if downloading them from the camera works. If it does, then format the card using the camera & try it again in the reader.
If the problem persists, then try another card & you should know then whether it's the card or the reader.

Thanks for the help all.