How do i format my memory card without losing my pictures??

I took my memory card out of my olympus stylus verve (digital camera) and i put it into my laptop the runs with windows vista. it then said i had to format the drive and if i did it would delete all the pictures. then when i put the memory card back into the camera its asking me to format my drive. if i format the drive on the camera will it delete my pictures as well? is their anyway i can do this without losing the important pictures i took? thank you for your help.

By definition - to format the card deletes all pictures.

If you have gone too far, TomTom is right.

We are hearing a lot of similar questions (complaints) about Vista, by the way...

go to yahoo search
type photo rescue

the word formatting means to erase the data on the drive and clean up the data allocation size. unfortunately u cant format something and not lose the data on it. i suggest u put the card back in your camera and see if it still insists on your formatting it. i think what happened is that your card was in FAT32 format and vista tried to format it in NTFS.