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yet another w500 sd card reader question

W500/W510/W520 and W700/W701 Series
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meeotch
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Posts: 84
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 1:47 pm

yet another w500 sd card reader question

#1 Post by meeotch » Mon Jan 03, 2011 1:40 pm

My w500's sd card reader doesn't seem to be recognizing cards at all. (As in: pop the card in, nothing happens. No change in Explorer, nothing.) In my device manager, I see two possibly related devices:

"Integrated Smart Card Reader" - Lenovo driver version 4.1.0.1
"SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller" - Microsoft driver version 6.1.7600.16438

Based on the many posts I've come across while searching, I sort of expected to see something with "Ricoh" in the name. And in fact, I downloaded the Ricoh card reader drivers from Lenovo, but none of the above devices seem to be compatible.

Am I missing something, or do I have some other flavor of card reader? I wasn't aware there were options.

Unfortunately, I've only got an SDHC card available for testing currently. I suppose that could be related - but the fact that the Ricoh drivers seem not to be used at all feels like the larger issue.

meeotch
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Posts: 84
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 1:47 pm

Re: yet another w500 sd card reader question

#2 Post by meeotch » Sat Jan 08, 2011 2:35 pm

Nobody out there using SDHC cards with a W500? Bueller?

If anyone's successfully doing this, could you post the device names & driver versions that show up in your Device Manager?

meeotch
Freshman Member
Posts: 84
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 1:47 pm

Re: yet another w500 sd card reader question

#3 Post by meeotch » Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:04 am

Further update: I found the Ricoh device - it was under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers". It's called "Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller", and seems to be using the latest drivers. I should also mention I'm running Windows 7.

I also noticed that when I put an SDHC card almost all the way in the slot (but not all the way - maybe 1.5mm before the "click"), the green LED next to the slot does some flashing. This is also true when the card is coming out, about 1.5mm after the click. However, nothing ever shows up in Windows Explorer, with a full card slot or an empty one.

For those out there with working w500 card readers - should the device show up in Explorer when there's nothing in the slot?

ChrK
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:57 am
Location: Madrid, Spain

Re: yet another w500 sd card reader question

#4 Post by ChrK » Wed Feb 09, 2011 10:22 am

I have the same problem, it seems to me since the last bios update.
Have you found some solution. The problem in my case is that I can't find the SD Card in Device Manager.

Chris

Thinkpad W500
Win 7

meeotch
Freshman Member
Posts: 84
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 1:47 pm

Re: yet another w500 sd card reader question

#5 Post by meeotch » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:37 am

As of this writing, I've got it working (I think). Not sure exactly what the deal was, but I can tell you the things I did:

0) Called Lenovo support. This one was a mistake. The tech tried to update everything in System Update simultaneously. When I stopped him, he agreed to only update the Ricoh driver and the bios, plus resetting all the bios settings to defaults. This caused my computer to bluescreen on every bootup - even Safe Mode was inaccessible. After an hour of him trying to fix his mess, I hung up and started working on it myself. The issue turned out to be that Windows was attempting to re-install the graphics driver (and a bunch of other ones) on boot for some reason. I'm pretty sure the graphics driver was what was BSOD'ing me. I did a System Restore to roll back the drivers. This got me my Safe Mode back. Then I went into Safe Mode, uninstalled all the devices it was trying to update, uninstalled the graphics driver & updated it by hand, rebooted... Back to where I started - everything working but the card reader.

1) Removed all "Ricoh" packages from Control Panel / Uninstall Software.
2) Installed the latest from this page: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-73713
...which I think is the same thing that System Update will give you if you run it.
3) At this point I had a Ricoh SD/MMC Controller in Device Manager / IDE ATA ATAPI Controllers, as well as a SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller under SD host adapters, and probably some other stuff.

4) This is the confusing one. I had to turn off AHCI in my bios (set it to "Compatibility" mode, it's under Settings / SATA, or something like that). I don't know why this is the case, since I previously had it working with AHCI turned on. But there you have it. Didn't have to flip the AHCI bit in the registry, just turned it off in bios. Card reader now works.

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