SD card weirdness

[Paul Unger]

I did an R&R restore to my T61 last week. All in all a difficult, frustrating, damaging experience... But I'll not rant here. What I'd like is some help figuring out an SD card issue that arose as a result. [At least I think it's a result.]

When I reinstalled Windows XP on the T61, I had a 4 GB SD card in the card reader slot. Apparently this was not a smart thing to do, since, when the reinstall was finished, the 4GB card was unreadable--all the files were gone and any attempts to format it failed. In fact, right-click > Format in XP offered to format it as a 512 KB (!) card in FAT format--these were the only options, and even they didn't work (yes, I tried). And there's where the weirdness begins...

Just for fun, I tried looking at the card in Ubuntu on the T61, and--lo and behold!--all the files were there. As far as Ubuntu was concerned, the card (and the card reader) was intact. I copied all the files off and then formatted the card with gparted: 4 GB / FAT32. It worked, I could copy files to and from it, I unmounted and mounted it and the files were still there. I booted my T61 back into XP but the card still wasn't working. It didn't do the 'device loaded' beep when I inserted it and it didn't show up in the 'Safely remove devices' list nor in Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management. Hmmm. Maybe I didn't load the 4-in-1 card reader software after the reinstall? I downloaded the latest and installed it, but it still wouldn't recognise the card. As a test I tried a different SD card in the T61 and it was recognised properly. As a final step I took the fishy 4 GB card to my Windows 7 machine and it worked properly there.

Recap: the card was left in the card reader slot during a reinstall of Windows XP; the card is not recognised by said reinstall of Windows XP (although other cards are recognised on the XP machine [ergo the hardware works]); the card is recognised as 4 GB / FAT32 by Ubuntu (on the same machine [ergo the hardware works]) and Windows 7 (on a different machine[ergo the card works).

So question: why would a card be recognised just fine on some machines / OSes, but be unrecognisable on one machine (that has, by all appearances, a perfectly functioning card reader)?

[billp117]

Try installing Windows 7...it runs beautiful on the T61 and may just solve your problem. Don't bother with R&R when just a native Win7 DVD will install 95% of all your drivers. Windows Update and ThinkVantage Update will take care of the rest. Try the 32 bit version first.

Good luck.

[Paul Unger]

That's a lot of clams to spend to get a lowly SD card working! Not sure I want to buy a new OS to solve this problem...

[billp117]

You can try it...

[bill bolton]

Recap: the card was left in the card reader slot during a reinstall of Windows XP;

You may need this..... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934428 ....or some other XP patch.

Cheers,

Bill B.