Strange Media Reader Problem

[RAD]

Hi guys,
I am working on trying to fix a few persistent problems in my wife's desktop (HP Pavilion a706n) and the current one has me a little stumped. The media card reader is behaving very oddly.

Now, the only parts of the reader she uses are the SD card port and the USB port. When you plug an SD card in the reading light flashes but the card is never accessible. When you plug a USB flash drive into the usb port it works just fine.

However, if you plug a plug and play device like a camera into the USB port the device comes up as accessible but you cannot access the contents of the device (the folder just shows as empty). Also, once you unplug the camera the usb controller in the device manager permanently indicates that it is waiting for you to "safely remove the hardware" until you reboot. Finally, when you unplug the camera a window pops up asking what program you want to use to open the camera with nothing listed (note this only happens after you unplug the camera). You also cannot uninstall the drivers once it is in this state, it starts throwing massive amounts of errors.

If I plug the camera into a different usb slot on the desktop it works perfectly fine.

So far I have tried:
Uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them,
disabling and enabling the media card reader,
and unplugging the connections from the reader to the mobo and reconnecting them.

None of these changes the problem. Is the media card reader just on its way to dead and I should buy a new one for her?

 

[Heather Taylor]

It sounds like there's a short in there somewhere...I used to see similar behavior with Mitsumi brand card readers, and in the end, replacing them was just the easiest thing to do. Fortunately, they're relatively inexpensive.

The other possibility might be to check for updates for your motherboard drivers, too. You never know...an updated chipset driver has magically fixed a lot of odd issues.