SD Card anomaly
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:31 AMI have installed windows 7 on a Dell D800 Latitude even though there were a couple of incompatibilities found with the checker. The video accepted an XP driver which surprised me. The checker pointed out that I would need to run windows update after installation to make the Texas instruments PCI 7510 Cardbus work. After the update the device reported working on all aspects.
I use a SD to PC Card adapter to read photos from my 2Gb Sandisk SD card. Previously with XP it worked perfectly but under W7 it appears to be unformatted. On checking with another computer it works normally in XP. Eventually I allowed W7 to format the card but could only get 968Mb. W7 was then able to read the card as well as my camera but I had lost half the capacity. This leads me to believe that the hardware is functioning correctly (possibly). I tried to format back to 2Gb both in my camera and XP but no go. I eventually used a panasonic utility to get back to full capacity. The card worked fine in the camera and under xp but once more W7 wanted to format the SD card. As it worked in W7 at the lower formatted capacity I am thinking that the hardware setup is ok.
I know SD cards sometimes give odd results but this card has been rock solid until now. Is anyone else having similar problems?
Apart from the SD card problem and the occasional delay in opening tabs in IE8 I like W7. It seems to have added the better parts of Vista and the usability of XP together.
All Replies
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 9:15 AMhi,
I had a problem like this on my Toshiba. And I saw it is a driver problem. Then on the Action Center I saw a flag that points about it. I used Action Center to forward me to correct driver and it find the correct driver and installed it.
there is no problem now. it is working.
regards,
Mumin CICEK | Exchange - MVP | www.cozumpark.com | www.mumincicek.com -
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:20 AMThanks for the feedback. Action centre reported and fixed a problem with my sound card which I was unaware of!
I then tried uninstalling the related devices but Action Centre only managed to reinstall the ATA card controller and PCMCIA adapter which gave me the memory card back. Still the same though. The smartcard driver failed to install through action centre. Not a problem as I do not use it.
I updated the smartcard driver through the device manager and this installed ok.
W7 still wants to format my card. -
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 11:06 AMTypically, the laptop devices are not generic and need drivers from the manufacturer. Dell only provides drivers for Win2K and Win XP for this computer. So, you'll have to use the drivers Win 7 RC installs. So, you are fortunate to have functionality of your devices.
Have you checked Disk Manager when the SD card is inserted in the adapter to determine if there are multiple partitions?
Which format does the camera utility use? Fat32? Perhaps something proprietary to the camera?
Is the camera utility creating partitions and directories?
What is the manufacturer and model of the PCMCIA adapter? -
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 12:24 PMThanks for the reply.
Yes the smartcard driver is from 2003 but the other is W7. It is interesting how tolerant W7 is of older hardware.
IDE\DiskMemory_Card_Adapter_II__________________S2-V1.01
Driver Version Microsoft 6.1.7100.0
Sandisk SDAD-67 6-in-1 PC Card Adapter.
Sandisk Extreme III 2 GB SD Card.
W7 Disk management really struggles to get anything meaningful from the card. Takes a long time and sometimes locks up.
Removable Disk1 969 MB RAW Healthy Primary.
Shows just the one partition but even though the card is formatted to 1.89GB shows 969MB.
With XP the storage manager reads it immediatly and correctly. (Different computer, though it previously worked normally on the D800 with XP.)
1.89 GB FAT Healthy.
Having previously used the panasonic utility to get back to 1.89 GB, XP will now format the SD card correctly but then W7 still cannot read the card. The W7 Disk manager shows 969 MB but no other information. It works as normal in the camera. The camera does create two directories when the first picture is taken. It does not seem to create any other partitions. The format function of the camera does not need to be run as the card works normally after being formatted in XP. I suspect XP's quick format is just a delete!
With W7. On trying to read and subsequently cancelling the option to format, a dialogue appears:
"E:\ is not accessible.
The volume does not contain a recognised file system......drivers etc."
It is interesting that the file system can be recognised by XP but not W7 using the same harware. -
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 3:53 PMThe cardbus controller/smartcard controller drivers are bundled together by Dell for XP. No Vista support. That could be one issue.
The adapter card is Plug&Play via the cardbus controller.
The SD cards should be recognized
Perhaps you could try this- put the SD card in the XP computer- delete any partition- create a new partition and format it NTFS.
Then try it in the Win 7 computer and see if it is fully recognized. If yes, attempt to reformat the partition back to Fat 32 while it is in the Win 7 computer. Then check the compatibility with the camera and XP computer.
I use the Sandisk Extreme cards- I have a reader built-in the M6300 and I use a USB thumb drive type adapter(let's me remove and replace the SD cards) on the desktops. I had no issues on XP, Vista or Win 7 in seeing the card correctly.
Dell went to an O2Micro driver on the D820, which was Vista compatible. The D800 and D810 use the same TI drivers, which Win 7 installed for you.
This may be the one hardware glitch taking a Win2k/XP hardware system to Win 7. -
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 3:57 PMThis may seem like a long shot, but can you try using Windows XP mode to see if it resolves your issue? Just follow this . I should let you know, though, that not all processors are compatible with this. Hopefully it helps you.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 4:07 PMAmtec,
From what you're describing, it sounds to me that the driver is not fully compatible with Windows 7 after all, despite the fact that it seemed to install fine. If Nano Warp's suggestion above doesn't work for you, I'm afraid that you'll need to wait for Windows 7 drivers from Dell. If they have stopped supporting this model, you may have some luck with installing media reader drivers from notebooks which they continue to support in Windows 7.
-Alex -
Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:28 PM Guys, thanks for your inputs.
I should explain that I am not desperate to fix this problem as I do not intend to keep W7 on this laptop. I was more interested in how W7 works compared to vista and XP. Later this year I intend to buy a new laptop with W7 installed. Having used Vista for short periods when fixing other peoples machines I had noted that some things were better and others not so good. On trying W7 with this laptop which is not fully compatible I am convinced W7 is the way forward.
With respect to my current problem, it does seem to be drivers as you suggest. Repartioning the SD card is not so easy but I did try a couple of USB card readers with vary results. The card reader which uses the generic driver will read a Corsair 2GB card with no problem but takes several minutes to recognise the Sandisk Extreme 2GB card. Formatting both these cards in W7 to full capacity still gives the same problem when in my PCMCIA adapter. Interestingly cards of a lower capacity work normally in the PCMCIA adapter with W7.
I will use the Corsair card in my camera and the USB reader to get around the problem for now.
Many thanks for all your efforts.
PS.
Adam, my cpu is not compatible with Windows XP mode.- Marked As Answer by Adam M MCP Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:33 PM
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Monday, June 21, 2010 8:55 PM
Hmm, one year later and the same issue persists: I am using an SD to PC Card adapter via USB 2.0 to read photos from different camera's and it is hard to find SD cards under 2GB.nowadays However all brands of these SD cards work fine on an old desktop with XP, but on three other machines with W7-64, W7-32 and Vista-32 the only option I get is to format the SD card at 986 MB. Tried it once to see if it helps, but as a consequence lost the SD cards full capacity and the camera's fail to reformat it.
I guess my old XP-PC will stick around for many more years as I have not found any driver solving this issue.
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Saturday, May 05, 2012 3:25 PM
I am also having an issue with card readers on both my laptop and desktop computers.
I purchased a windows 7 home premium upgrade for both computers.the Laptop was running windows vista and the Desktop XP. After performing the upgrade the card reader worked once on the laptop then has since stopped working, I've tried reloading drivers and software and am getting nowhere.
The desktop is another issue. The card reader does not work at all. Also, the CD/RW drive that I used to perform the upgrade has stopped working as well. the upgrade disk is stuck in the drive and I cannot even open the thing. I tried reverting back to the original operating systems on the laptop, but the card reader still does not function.
Everything worked fine before the upgrade and stopped almost immediately after the install, so It has got to be something in the windows 7 that is doing this, an altered code or something that doesn't get reset when reverting back.
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