External USB Card Readers and XP

[ronald]

Hi

I am having problems with getting WindowsXP SP2 to recognize external media
readers.. anything from not recognizing that they are plugged in to showing
up but having the drive letters come and go intermittently.. at one point it
was working perfectly, then had to reinstall windows xp and it no longer
recognizes it.. installing drivers from the included CD Rom also does not
help (even though it says it's not required with XP)..

It doesn't help to use internal MoBo ports or ports on usb pci cards. Just
got a call from my sister who says she just got a media reader and plugged
it in and it also doesn't work on her computer with windows xp.. I have
tried two different readers, the one I am using now is a Sandisk Imagemate
12 in 1 reader..

Wierd.. just plugged it in and it works with the SD Card I just plugged in,
all the letters show up with the designator for each type (CF, SM, KODAK,
and MS) visible with the drive letters in my computer. It is plugged in to
a USB 2 card in a PCI slot..

Of course I don't know how long this will work now, forever or until I
reboot... anybody out there know if this is a widespread problem with XP or
does it seem to be mainly some motherboards? (mine is an ASUS SLI mobo)

She has XP Home and I have XP Pro..

Thanks for any hints to this problem.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Hi

I am having problems with getting WindowsXP SP2 to recognize external media
readers.. anything from not recognizing that they are plugged in to showing
up but having the drive letters come and go intermittently.. at one point it
was working perfectly, then had to reinstall windows xp and it no longer
recognizes it.. installing drivers from the included CD Rom also does not
help (even though it says it's not required with XP)..

It doesn't help to use internal MoBo ports or ports on usb pci cards. Just
got a call from my sister who says she just got a media reader and plugged
it in and it also doesn't work on her computer with windows xp.. I have
tried two different readers, the one I am using now is a Sandisk Imagemate
12 in 1 reader..

Wierd.. just plugged it in and it works with the SD Card I just plugged in,
all the letters show up with the designator for each type (CF, SM, KODAK,
and MS) visible with the drive letters in my computer. It is plugged in to
a USB 2 card in a PCI slot..

Of course I don't know how long this will work now, forever or until I
reboot... anybody out there know if this is a widespread problem with XP or
does it seem to be mainly some motherboards? (mine is an ASUS SLI mobo)

She has XP Home and I have XP Pro..

Thanks for any hints to this problem.

One thing to do is to tell XP not to turn the power off on the USB ports. In
Device Manager, under USB, you need to tell XP to to turn off the power to the
USB port that you are using.


Also, I have encountered a situation where the "direct" USB ports (USB 1.1
and USB 2.0) port were not able to provide enough power over the USB cable for
the reader. I was able to solve this by connecting the reader to a powered
USB hub (unit has its own power transformer/adapter.)