T410 SD card reader working intermittently

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fastbiter · #1 Post by **fastbiter** » Sat Apr 30, 2011 8:33 am

Hello!
I received my fancy new T410 yesterday, and one of the simple features I was looking forward to about it was it having an SD card reader. Both my cameras use SD cards and have very slow USB interfaces, so I normally ended up using a small cardreader on my latitude (now replaced.) In any case, after I set it up and ran the thinkvantage updater I tried inserting a card, and nothing happened. I looked in device manager and there was nothing. Some time later in the day I rebooted and suddenly... there was an SD card showing up in my computer (I had left it in). I pulled it in and out and tried another one and the reader worked with no problems, nice fast transfer rates and everything. Showed up in device manager too.

But this morning I rebooted again after having installed some software and now it doesn't work or show up in device manager! Why is it doing this? My only thought was that it has something to do with the power management settings, like how the optical drive turns itself off, but I haven't been able to find any information about this.

Thanks in advance,
John

hunterman223 · #2 Post by **hunterman223** » Sat Apr 30, 2011 9:24 am

It's probably faulty, but you can try booting up a Linux live cd such as ubuntu to see if it works continuously there. Could also be a loose cable, but not likely. If it doesn't work in ubuntu I would send it in.

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

fastbiter · #3 Post by **fastbiter** » Sat Apr 30, 2011 9:58 am

Thanks for the suggestion to try a LiveCD, I totally forgot about that!

In any case, it works fine in ubuntu. Here's how it shows up in lspci:

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0d:00.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd MMC/SD Host Controller (rev 01)
0d:00.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Memory Stick Host Controller (rev 01)

And when I insert a card, dmesg updates with these events:

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[  133.470252] mmc0: new SD card at address 05ad
[  133.482678] mmcblk0: mmc0:05ad SD02G 1.83 GiB 
[  133.484049]  mmcblk0: p1

So my guess is it's something on the windows-driver side. I'll try downloading and reinstalling the driver.

EDIT: an interesting update! When I booted back into windows I left the card in the reader (yay absentmindedness) and it showed up in my computer. Other cards do too! I suppose I have to reboot with a card in the reader for windows to be aware of the fact that there is a card reader there to use? More testing needed!

omegatron · #4 Post by **omegatron** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:19 am

I have to reboot my T410 to get the SD card reader to work sometimes, too. Any luck finding a cause?

Weogo · #5 Post by **Weogo** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:33 pm

Hi Y'all,

I too have a T410.
A few times I have inserted an SD card and the T410 didn't see it.

To me, it appears to be a bit of a sloppy card fit.
If it doesn't read the card, I pop it back out and carefully insert it as centered as possible and it works.

Good luck, Weogo