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camelbreath

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USB CF Card Recognition Problems and other USB Woes

My desktop is custom built to wit: Pentium 4 3.2 running satisfactorily at 3.45, ASUS P4P800-E DeLuxe Mother Board, 2 GB DDR matched Ram, Gigabyte (Radeon) 9800XT - 256 Ram. Laptop is Toshiba Satellite P4 2.8, 1GB Ram. XP Pro-SP2 in both machines.

Up until a month or so ago the USB function on both machines worked as touted, plug it in and it works. Then for some unknown reason, both machines decided they liked what was presently conncected but refused to recognize new USB devices including camera cards in a reader which has always worked just fine. Then occasionally, this malady would go away and the camera card/reader combo would work just fine.

Part of my business is digital photography so downloading and storing images is a major issue for me.

The plot thickens. A few days ago, delightfully, the machine was in its "OK I like camera cards" mode. I bought a 200 GB Maxtor internal hard drive installed it in a usb2 external housing, plugged it in and the desktop would not recognize it. I finally succumbed to reading the instructions and install and ran Maxtors "Max Blast" software. In less than a minute, the machine and new external hard drive became friends. The HD showed up on Windows explorer and life was good. I hooked up the card reader to download images and the *&^%#### machine did not recognize the card (or reader). I did a system restore which took the maxtor out of the picture and the card reader and card were recognized. Reinstalled the Maxtor and the problem came back.

So I said "OK, this card reader is an antique," and went forth and bought a new reader, a Sandisk Image Mate SSDR-89 12 in one. The reader has a button function which must be installed from a CD which I did. Alledgedly with XP installing drivers for this hard was not required. The instructions said each "hole" in the reader would demonstrate in Windows Explorer as a separate drive. The button did not work. Only one of the "holes" in the reader showed on Windows Explorer ... the one which accomodates a Sony memory stick (from my wife's camra). Which is where I am now.

Device Manager USB info as follows:
Generic USB Hub
Intel(R) 82801EB Universal Host Controller 24D2
Intel(R) 82801EB Universal Host Controller 24D4
Intel(R) 82801EB Universal Host Controller 24D7
USB Composite Device
USB Mass Storage Device
USB Printing Support
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub

Device Manager drive info as follows:
CSC 18GB 15K Refurbished SCSI Disk Device
CSC 18GB 15K Refurbished SCSI Disk Device
CSC 18GB 15K Refurbished SCSI Disk Device
CSC 36GB 15K Refurbished SCSI Disk Device
Generic storage USB device
Maxtor 6 L200PO USB Device
ST 316002 #A USB Device
WDC WD2500JD 00GBB0

No yellow triangles.

Can anyone help?
Thjanks!
Joe
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Callandor
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This sounds like your hardware is ok, but USB troubleshooting can be difficult, due to various manufacturers having their own ideas about what "should" work.  You can try removing the USB drivers in device manager and let them reinstall when the system reboots; you can also try a powered USB hub, in case the extra load is too much for your motherboard USB ports to handle.
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camelbreath

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Call: I have done both to no avail and I see you are sitting tp the pecking order in hardware. Acutally, wehn I delete the drivers and crank back up. The old reader will work, but jus the one hole on the new one, but the maxtor is not recognized. Then I run max-blast and the maxtor comes in fine and the reader goes away. SSCREECHHH!
Thanks!
Joe
A USB 2.0 compliant hard drive should not need special drivers to work, because WinXP sp2 has all that is needed.  Can you try this drive on another machine, and also on another OS like Win2K?  I suspect the USB housing you are using is the problem, and a different housing would give you the solution.  The good thing is that they don't cost too much.
Call:
Functionally, I have done this on my two XP SP2 machines. When you say housing, are you talking about the card recepticle?
I have another machine XPPro SP1. I'm going to try the new reader on it. I'll let you know. thanks for your continuing attention.
Joe
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Callandor
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Now the light starts to shine. I'll see if I can chase down a new driver for that little sucker. Stay tuned.
Thanks!
Joe
Callandor:
I had put in a tech-request to Sandisk concurrently with the EE request. The guy just called me and solved the problem. This particular reader (Sandisk DDR 89) has four recepitcles for different media. When it installs it wants four consecutive drive letters. Unfortunately, it picked a letter that was not followed by four consecutive drive letters. He talked me through renaming the four "drives" on the reader as w,x,y and z and now life is good again. This is good information and I hope you are able to use it to good advantage on EE. Thank you for sticking with me earlier today. I appreciate your tenacity and knowledge. Because of that, you get the points as well as the new pearl of wisom.
Thanks again,
Joe from LA
(Lower Arkansas)

PS: For camera card users, the SanDisk tech-rep says you should not depend totally on the camera to format your cards. He says to occasionally format the cards with the computer.
J