SD Card slot gains Stealth powers?

[hellosailor]

T61p Win7/32, and the computer has decided to play a new game with me. I pop out the resident SD card, pop in a new one, and the computer insists there's no card in slot forever after. Yes, I've tried using the EJECT applet. Doesn't make any difference, that claims there's no more SD cards after the first one has been ejected too.

Now, the computer worked just fine under Vista, and worked just fine after a clean install of Win7 coupla months ago, so I'm thinking one of the constant upgrades, either to a Lenovo driver or Windows, broke it.

Right now rebooting in order to change cards is necessary and "we are not amused" as the lady said.

Yes, I also dl'd the most recent Ricoh smart card driver from the Lenovo support site tonight, no difference. I suspect that's the problem and the bad driver.

Yes, i tried the search function--it said come back later, it was not available.


So, has anyone met this ghost before? And found a way to exorcise it?


Thank god the brakes in my car weeren't designed by computer programmers.

[Radioguy]

Try inserting the card verrry slowly and look to see/hear if it's recognized on the way in.

The reader mechanism can have a hiccup on occasion, or plain wear out, and this can allow the card to be retained in a position where the contacts are not being met.

[cadillacmike68]

I have auto updates turned OFF. I don't want ANY program going out and doing something behind my back.

I have it set so winblows notifies me of updates, and when i feel like it i look at them and decide which ones to dl and install. Some of my older apps will get broken by installing certain "updates", so i have them permanently shut off. Occasionally winblows decides to turn them back on, so i have to shut them back off every now and then. [censored] POS winblows.

Same thing with other apps, I set them all to NEVER look for an update. If I need one, I'll get it.

And don't forget the change rule. Do not change more than 1 thing at a time.

[hellosailor]

I've got reason to suspect the reader is actually working. It makes the low-high tone when media is inserted, and the high-low tone when media is removed, as usual and normal. And an "invisible" card becomes perfectly visible just by restarting, with no physical change.

All points to an OS/driver issue.

As for not doing updates or doing them one at a time...sure, nice theory. With the little stuff you can't go down a list to test everything on the computer, every time, for every niggle, to see what might become collateral damage. I appreciate the thought but let's go back to what should I do if I meet the Bhudda standing in the road on that one.

[EasyMac308]

Couple things I'd look at just in interest of narrowing things down.

1. Does the drive show up in disk management, just without a letter?
2. If you delete the card reader from device manager and scan for hardware changes to readd it, does it now see the card when it didn't before?

[SafeHarbor]

Hi. Well, you can certainly tell if the light beside the SD card port is agreeing with what the OS is showing. I used to work for a company that distributed their product on SD cards (for Palm and Windows Mobile devices), and the experience I took away from that is that SD cards and SD card slots are generally wonky.

That said, have you blown out the port to see if gunk has accumulated in there? Have you polished up the contacts on your SD cards by gently rubbing with a pencil eraser?

Hmm... I don't have the Ricoh driver showing in System Update 5 (Win and the SD reader is working normally... Oh, no. It wants to update System Update... I'm out of it for thirty minutes. Good luck!

[hellosailor]

mac,
I deleted the device and reinstalled it. Showed an error "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)" both before and after, same same. Which seems to mean the driver is wonky.

And I see I forgot to mention--no, the drive doesn't show up in drive mangler [sic] at all. Presto-chango, poof, how to make a drive disappear?

safe,
if you consider that the hardware works perfectly BUT ONLY AFTER A BOOT that pretty much eliminates question fo dirty contacts and the like. There's nothing wrong with the contacts, and in fact I always keep a card in there so dirt can't accumulate in the slot. Any card works as long as it is there after booting. No car works, no matter how often it is swapped, after the first one is ejected. That's not a hardware symptom, that's the sign of an impostor working as a programmer. Or, since Lenovo are Chinese and the Chinese government has been sposnoring malicious hacking all over the US (according to the CIA, NSA, and DoD among others who sometimes can be believed) maybe this is just more Chinese hacking, done the easy way?

[EasyMac308]

Yeah, I'd definitely look at the driver. See if you can find an older one and see if that's any better. Plan B is to use System Restore to go back to a restore point before you had the issue.

[hellosailor]

What's the procedure for using system restore to just restore one driver?

[EasyMac308]

You wouldn't. However, SR only affects system files, registry settings, and drivers, so your data will be safe. It's also reversible if it comes down to it.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... em-restore

[hellosailor]

That's what I thought. No way I'm pushing that button and reverting the whole system, just to chase one driver. Found a 10/2012 version of the Ricoh media driver, we'll see what happens after I get a chance to try that one.