[Nook Color Android Development] Razgueado:
When you tried to write the image with WinImage, did you open the image first or did you Restore it? If you did a File->Open, that's probably where you went wrong.

Try this:

* Insert your SD card.

* Close all windows - at least any windows that might see the drive, but best just close them all.

* Open WinImage. Do NOT click the File menu.

* Click Disk Menu

* Click Restore Virtual Hard Disk Image on Physical Drive

* A dialog will come up asking you which drive to use. If there are multiple disks listed, make sure the checkbox for Include non removable hard disks is NOT checked. Repeat -- NOT checked.

* Find your SD card reader in the list. If there are still multiple drives listed, look for the one that corresponds in size to your SD card. Click it, and click okay.

* A file open dialog will appear. In the bottom right corner above the buttons there will be a pick list of image types. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU OPEN THAT LIST AND SELECT "ALL FILES".

*Navigate to where you've extracted the IMG file you want to burn. Highlight the file, and click Open.

*WinImage should now present it's "last warning" that you will be obliterating your SD card. Click okay or whatever the the affirmative button is and it should write your disk.

*When it's finished writing you'll be back at the WinImage window. Close WinImage, do a safe eject of your SD card using the mechanism for your version of Windows. If you don't know what that is, look it up. On Win 7 use the little icon in the Action Center. This is a precautionary step to make sure Windows has really finished writing to the disk.

Your card should now be quite usable.

It took me several hours of futzing with both Win32diskimager and WinImage to figure this procedure out. Win32diskimager is highly sensitive to something retaining a connection to the drive, and will error out if it thinks there's a file open on the SD card - and sometimes you can't for love nor money figure out what it thinks is open.

WinImage is less sensitive to that, but by default WinImage only lets you open one partition at a time, so if you open the image and select one partition, and then burn it to the disk, you only get that one partition and not all the partitions that are actually supposed to be on the disk. Also, if you try to restore an image, its file open dialog filters IMG files so you can never see them unless you set it to see all files. It never gives you a clue that it will accept an IMG file as a Virtual Hard Disk image, but it will. And it never tells you that you can't have an image open in the program and try to restore it to SD - it just errors out cryptically.

There may be a way around this, but I haven't found it, other than not opening the image first. So these are the tricks - don't open the image first, try to close anything that might touch the SD card, and make the file dialog look for all files so you can find your IMG.

I've done this successfully with all manner of Micro SD cards on Windows 7, with both my built-in SD reader and a USB reader...now that I know the idiosyncrasies. If this doesn't work for you, I'd guess something's screwed on your Windows machine.

Good luck,

Raz