How-To Geek

I have had the exact setup working for over a year, yet after a recent clean install of Win 7 SP1, I cant find a way to get my card reader to actually access the card.

My computer is a standard XPS M1330 and the card reader is from Ricoh. When I insert an SD card (works fine in other operating systems, including an old version of 7 on another computer, which has had no updates from Windows) the machine recognizes the card, you hear the familiar mounting sound, and the "add/remove" icon pops up in the task bar. After a few seconds the card appears in "Computer", first as a generic drive icon, and later as a "Secure digital storage device"

However, when I try to access the card, the computer hangs for around 25 seconds whilst the address bar loads, finally a message stating "you need to format the disk in drive "X" before you can use it". After another 20 seconds, or if I cancel the operation prematurely, a further message appears stating "x" is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required system drivers are installed..."

So far I have tried all the available Ricoh drivers I can find but none are better than the other. I have tried installing from the .exe file, manually installing, deleting the drivers and letting windows search itself... nothing... everything results in the same behavior.

Which lead me to believe that the Ricoh drivers may not be the problem...

The card is recognised and appears as it should. Yet when you try to aggess the information, windows hangs, and wont let you in. I found the following article on the knowledge base http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981642 which relates to an issue that sounds exactly like mine.

From the article...
"- Windows 7 recognizes the SD card several minutes after it is inserted and then it appears on Device Manager. However, trying to browse the SD card in Windows Explorer generates the following message, prompting you to format the SD card:

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You need to format the disk in drive (drive letter): before you can use it.

Do you want to format it?

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You are able to format the SD card after the message appears. However, in several minutes, you will receive the "Windows was unable to complete the format" error message and fail to format it.

If you insert the same SD card into a Windows Vista Service Pack 2 based computer, Windows Vista can recognize it properly and it can be used properly. Given this, this problem would cause a greater inconvenience to the customers who upgrade their computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7 or who use their SD card both on Windows 7 and Windows Vista based computers."

Microsoft goes on to say this is...
"To strictly comply with the SD card specification, Windows 7 modified Secure Digital Bus Driver (Sdbus.sys). This problem occurs when you use certain SD cards that do not behave according to the SD card specification."

Unfortunately, they then offer no resolution to the issue, stating simply that this is "by design"!!!

So right now I am stuck without too many other ideas. I really need to have a working card reader as it is a component I use on a regular basis. Any help or advice you can give will be much appreciated.

Cheers

Fitz

Cheers, I ran the test on my computer. It saw the card, but it was registered as "Bad Disk" and all the options were grayed out.

I then ran the same test with the same card on another computer (the computer running win 7 where I have full access to the card) and it completed the test with no errors found.

As another Idea, I tried taking all of the sdbus files from System32 on the working computer and transfering them to mine. I then uninstalled the drivers from the "SD Host Adapter", deleted the old drivers, restarted the computer allowing windows to load the new sdbus files, but sadly, no changes.

"So far I have tried all the available Ricoh drivers I can find but none are better than the other. I have tried installing from the .exe file, manually installing, deleting the drivers and letting windows search itself... nothing... everything results in the same behavior."

Any more ideas?

Yes, I cant read a single SD, of any size or manufacturer (obviously I cant speak for every card out there, but from what I have, nothing works). The same cards work perfectly on my other computer.

I dont think so. The Reader can see the card, everything appears to be working, it just cant see inside. The reader also worked perfectly with a previous build of windows.

Im at a loss.

For €3 how could you not solve the problem by getting a new reader.

Have a look next time you are in Intermarche. USB SD reader.
That's where I bought mine.

Yes. But in the meantime.....