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built-in card reader quit working

17 years ago

I have an HP Pavilion a6600f, Vista. I've had it a couple of months. It has a built-in 15-in-1 card reader. It has worked fine until today. I use an SD card that I use in my camera. Today nothing happened when I plugged it in, and when I looked in Device Manager I couldn't see anything that I thought was a card reader. I checked in my computer, and the only removeable storage device it showed was the CD drive. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Comments (8)

genes
17 years ago
Do you have an up to date antivirus protection program on your computer besides the trial version (probably expired) of whatever came with it
irislover7b
Original Author
17 years ago
I have the free Avast and I believe it updates automatically.
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ravencajun Zone 8b TX
17 years ago
I would contact HP since it is so new and still under warranty and ask them, it may be it was a defective part and needs to be replaced.
You can of course always get a stand alone card reader for quite cheap and plug into a usb port or usb hub and use that.
irislover7b
Original Author
17 years ago
I tried shutting the computer down and turning it back on, rather than restarting, and it's working now.
jane__ny
17 years ago
I have the exact, same problem with a Dell desktop. I never bothered calling them because it takes half a day to get someone and it would probably work. Sometimes it does, other times not.

Restarting is the only thing which works. Also, if I use 'safely remove hardware' it stops working and will not work without a restart. I never use 'safely remove..' anymore and take my chances by just removing the card. I've done this for a year and so far I haven't lost anything.

Jane
jean001
17 years ago
It was said: "if I use 'safely remove hardware' it stops working and will not work without a restart."

That's what it's supposed to do. It "removes" that drive which is now out-of-commission until you restart.

Instead, right click the drive the card is in, then, in the drop-down menu, click Eject.

When the name of that drive (Canon, or whatever) changes to the capital letter (E, F or whatever), remove the card. (No need to restart.)
asolo
17 years ago
If your situation is that you have one particular kind of card you use a lot -- and want uploaded to your computer a lot -- strongly advise spending $20.00 for dedicated reader for that type of card with USB2 connection. I suspect you may find it much more convenient and probably a lot faster reading/writing also.

Most mfg use these multi-reader things as a marketing ploy to make people think they're getting lots of extra value by buying their box. In fact, they slapped the cheapest, slowest pieces of dung they could find into those boxes that still allowed them to advertise "multi-media reading kiosk built-in!" They're typically very slow and very troublesome.

HP is especially famous for this, but they all do it. I have little doubt that's what you've got.
jane__ny
17 years ago
Jean, what I was trying to explain was, if I click 'safely' and remove the card, the drive will not start up again with another card. I must shut the computer down and restart. It's a pain when I'm using a card where I am taking photos and need to shoot some, put it in to view, take it out and put it in again. If I hit 'safely' I could not put the card back in without restarting the computer. If I just take the card out, without hitting 'safely', it will work when I put the card back in again.

Jane

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