iPhoto 9.1.5 spinning wheel importing photos from SD-Card

Hi,

On the Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo 1.66 GhZ) with Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and iPhoto 9.1.5, when inserting a SD-Card from a camera, through a USB Card Reader, iPhoto starts and switches to the import assistant, but won't ever display the content of the card.

iPhoto is not responding, and it is required to Force Quit it. Then eject the memory Card. When restarting iPhoto, still the same issue : even with no Card in the reader, iPhoto shows a spinning wheel. You have to force quit, reboot, and then iPhoto works again.

This scenario happens each time I insert a SD-Card in the reader. I've tried with 2 different SD-Cards.

Importing pictures works well from finder : dragging pictures from the SD-Card in Finder to iPhoto works like a charm.

Disk space free is only 85%, less than 10GB. Total hard disk space 80GB. Total iPhoto Library size is 35GB.

The problem occurred after last software update.

I've not tryed to repair yet, I need to take a backup first.

Can anyone tell me what's wrong ?

Thanks.

Philippe