Installing CHDK (*BETA RELEASE*) on the Canon PowerShot A2200

I’ll list the steps to boot CHDK on this camera, through the ‘Card-Lock’ method. If you already know the firmware version your camera has, much better; although the camera will simply not boot or crash if you get the wrong version. Replace and try again. (Guessing by a fair amount, I concluded that: version D = Americas; B = Europe; C = Asia; but don’t take that as a rule.)

Go ahead and download the corresponding firmware, and an hexadecimal editor. I used HxD (http://mh-nexus.de/en/downloads.php?product=HxD), so you might want to do the same.

PowerShot A2200 CHDK firmware (rev 2079):  

1.00B: http://ubuntuone.com/2YHPx36n2IT8MQz6Oye9qz   
1.00C: http://ubuntuone.com/4hXuSZl5Mmaxp0p2Ix7L7H   
1.00D: http://ubuntuone.com/6tNDPIsW37C6Z4cR76s3M7

(If you’re willing to read through in more detail, which I recommend, help yourself at the porting thread at setepontos’ blog: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=6254.msg89175#msg89175 )

Now to the deed.

Step 1: Format the SD card in FAT32; and I also recommend you name it distinctively. For example, I named mine “CHDK_16GB”.

Step 2: Run HxD as administrator, and go to “Extras > Open Disk...”

Step 3: Select your card from the list of “Logical Drives”, and be sure to deselect the “read only” checkbox.

Step 4: Go to the line “0x01E0”, and replace ‘any key’ with “BOOTDISK”. 

Step 5: Save, quit HxD, and now unzip the contents of the file you downloaded to the root directory of your SD card.

Step 6: Flick the little switch on the side of the SD card to the “lock” position (hence the “Card-Lock” method), insert the card on the camera, and there you go. 

Done.