Re: Card Reader won't read 2Gb SD card

I have a 6 in 1 card reader that has the 969mb memory problem with
recognizing 2mb sd cards--mine is a Patriot brand card.

I can boot into Windows 2000. It recognizes the card perfectly.

Seems to be a Vista bug for sure.

jwstiles------.com,

Does Device Manager display any alert information about the SD card reader?
For example, does it have a problem with this device? Need a driver, etc?

Also, see this information about a hot fix for some SD problem situations:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825

Let us know if you find anything.

--
freddy


"jwstiles@summitpyramid.com" wrote:

> I have a 6 in 1 card reader that has the 969mb memory problem with
> recognizing 2mb sd cards--mine is a Patriot brand card.
>
> I can boot into Windows 2000. It recognizes the card perfectly.
>
> Seems to be a Vista bug for sure.
>
>
>

"freddy" wrote:

> jwstiles------.com,
>
> Does Device Manager display any alert information about the SD card reader?
> For example, does it have a problem with this device? Need a driver, etc?
>
> Also, see this information about a hot fix for some SD problem situations:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825
>
> Let us know if you find anything.
>
> --
> freddy
>
>
> "jwstiles@summitpyramid.com" wrote:
>
> > I have a 6 in 1 card reader that has the 969mb memory problem with
> > recognizing 2mb sd cards--mine is a Patriot brand card.
> >
> > I can boot into Windows 2000. It recognizes the card perfectly.
> >
> > Seems to be a Vista bug for sure.
> >
> >
> >

OK, now that I have signed into MS Newsgroups, here is my bug report:

Title – Bug in Vista. Failure to read or recognize SD card in generic SD
card reader.

Hardware Description – Generic (brand) 6 in 1 USB flash card reader, a
product of Edge Digital Media phone 800 332 6581 (model CR-V10-U6) is
recognized by Vista and each slot is mounted as a drive. No errors are
reported in Device Manager in the storage and the USB and the System panes.
No other errors are reported on this computer. Computer is new, Gigabyte DS3
mobo, 1.83Ghz e4300 Core2Duo, 2g memory, runs Vista Home Premium with the
transparent effects.

The other hardware components: Nikon D40 digital camera that formats SD and
SDHC cards with the FAT (as reported in the card properties as read on an XP
computer that has no trouble reading a plain 2 gb SD card (about $15 at
mwave.com. Card works great in camera, XP and W2K. Should be a very popular
use for the media center centered Vista. Too bad Vista cannot read the card
with the pictures.) SD cards from Crucial and Patriot tested with identical
results.

The Microsoft driver that enumerates the SD card as a storage drive, is
dated 7/01/2001 version 5.1.2535.0 using files disk.wys, partmgr.sys, and
snapman.sys. Note that the card is read perfectly in Windows 2000 booted on
the identical PC that experiences the Vista SD card reader bug.

This is the behavior:

Vista recognizes the card reader as separate storage devices mounted as
drives in the file explorer. Device Manager reports no errors. All
recommended updates to Vista have been installed. The hot fix for SD cards,
KB936825, has been installed. No change in behavior.

When the card is inserted into the reader in Vista, a dialog reminiscent of
the Mac OS appears: You need to format the disk in drive M: before you can
use it. Do you want to format it? A "format disk" button is highlighted so
the inattentive user can trash all his pictures by hitting the Enter key.
Folks with digital cameras are trashing their creative work as you read this.

I saved the pictures on another computer and threw the card back into the
reader in Vista to see what happened. It did attempt the slowest formatting I
have ever seen. Agnonzingly slow. After about half an hour, and some time
spent on other endeavors, the job was done. The report said that the SD card,
a 2 gig model, was now formatted to 969 mb. The $15 2gb card is now a
somewhat more expensive 1 gb card. Fortunately, the Nikon D40 could reformat
the card in about 2 seconds. (Very nice camera BTW. It takes all the old
Nikon glass I have, and that is very cheap on eBay. Those old lenses are
great optically, and have lots of other special features. Oh, and they are
fabulously fast. Great for museums, restaurants, etc, without flash.)

Reproduction Steps – The behavior reproduces consistently.

Expected Results – Recognize and read data on SD card (Patriot and Crucial
brands) formatted as FAT. (FAT32 not specified, but probably used.) I can't
find a smaller SD card to test is it is seen by the OS. Reports on the net
seem to say that smaller cards may not have the problem. However, since large
capacity

Severity - This is not a system crash. However, millions of Vista owners
will want to uuse the media support in Vista to view photos. The use of high
capacity SD cards is huge and will only increase because of low prices and
the convenience of large memory sizes to hold large files.

Conclusion-

Inability to read and format SD ( and probably other) flash cards will
adversely affect the user experience of the media components in Vista.

"freddy" wrote:

> jwstiles------.com,
>
> Does Device Manager display any alert information about the SD card reader?
> For example, does it have a problem with this device? Need a driver, etc?
>
> Also, see this information about a hot fix for some SD problem situations:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825
>
> Let us know if you find anything.
>
> --
> freddy
>
>
> "jwstiles@summitpyramid.com" wrote:
>
> > I have a 6 in 1 card reader that has the 969mb memory problem with
> > recognizing 2mb sd cards--mine is a Patriot brand card.
> >
> > I can boot into Windows 2000. It recognizes the card perfectly.
> >
> > Seems to be a Vista bug for sure.
> >
> >
> >

Should have included the properties in Vista for the card reader storage
device. Driver file version is 6.0.6000. vista.rtm.061101-2205. Only two
files associated with this device: partmgr.sys and disk.sys. List lacks the
snapman.sys driver file that was present in the XP device driver file
listing. This might be significant.

"bigwater" wrote:

> OK, now that I have signed into MS Newsgroups, here is my bug report:
>
> Title – Bug in Vista. Failure to read or recognize SD card in generic SD
> card reader.
>
> Hardware Description – Generic (brand) 6 in 1 USB flash card reader, a
> product of Edge Digital Media phone 800 332 6581 (model CR-V10-U6) is
> recognized by Vista and each slot is mounted as a drive. No errors are
> reported in Device Manager in the storage and the USB and the System panes.
> No other errors are reported on this computer. Computer is new, Gigabyte DS3
> mobo, 1.83Ghz e4300 Core2Duo, 2g memory, runs Vista Home Premium with the
> transparent effects.
>
> The other hardware components: Nikon D40 digital camera that formats SD and
> SDHC cards with the FAT (as reported in the card properties as read on an XP
> computer that has no trouble reading a plain 2 gb SD card (about $15 at
> mwave.com. Card works great in camera, XP and W2K. Should be a very popular
> use for the media center centered Vista. Too bad Vista cannot read the card
> with the pictures.) SD cards from Crucial and Patriot tested with identical
> results.
>
> The Microsoft driver that enumerates the SD card as a storage drive, is
> dated 7/01/2001 version 5.1.2535.0 using files disk.wys, partmgr.sys, and
> snapman.sys. Note that the card is read perfectly in Windows 2000 booted on
> the identical PC that experiences the Vista SD card reader bug.
>
> This is the behavior:
>
> Vista recognizes the card reader as separate storage devices mounted as
> drives in the file explorer. Device Manager reports no errors. All
> recommended updates to Vista have been installed. The hot fix for SD cards,
> KB936825, has been installed. No change in behavior.
>
> When the card is inserted into the reader in Vista, a dialog reminiscent of
> the Mac OS appears: You need to format the disk in drive M: before you can
> use it. Do you want to format it? A "format disk" button is highlighted so
> the inattentive user can trash all his pictures by hitting the Enter key.
> Folks with digital cameras are trashing their creative work as you read this.
>
> I saved the pictures on another computer and threw the card back into the
> reader in Vista to see what happened. It did attempt the slowest formatting I
> have ever seen. Agnonzingly slow. After about half an hour, and some time
> spent on other endeavors, the job was done. The report said that the SD card,
> a 2 gig model, was now formatted to 969 mb. The $15 2gb card is now a
> somewhat more expensive 1 gb card. Fortunately, the Nikon D40 could reformat
> the card in about 2 seconds. (Very nice camera BTW. It takes all the old
> Nikon glass I have, and that is very cheap on eBay. Those old lenses are
> great optically, and have lots of other special features. Oh, and they are
> fabulously fast. Great for museums, restaurants, etc, without flash.)
>
> Reproduction Steps – The behavior reproduces consistently.
>
> Expected Results – Recognize and read data on SD card (Patriot and Crucial
> brands) formatted as FAT. (FAT32 not specified, but probably used.) I can't
> find a smaller SD card to test is it is seen by the OS. Reports on the net
> seem to say that smaller cards may not have the problem. However, since large
> capacity
>
> Severity - This is not a system crash. However, millions of Vista owners
> will want to uuse the media support in Vista to view photos. The use of high
> capacity SD cards is huge and will only increase because of low prices and
> the convenience of large memory sizes to hold large files.
>
> Conclusion-
>
> Inability to read and format SD ( and probably other) flash cards will
> adversely affect the user experience of the media components in Vista.
>
> "freddy" wrote:
>
> > jwstiles------.com,
> >
> > Does Device Manager display any alert information about the SD card reader?
> > For example, does it have a problem with this device? Need a driver, etc?
> >
> > Also, see this information about a hot fix for some SD problem situations:
> >
> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825
> >
> > Let us know if you find anything.
> >
> > --
> > freddy
> >
> >
> > "jwstiles@summitpyramid.com" wrote:
> >
> > > I have a 6 in 1 card reader that has the 969mb memory problem with
> > > recognizing 2mb sd cards--mine is a Patriot brand card.
> > >
> > > I can boot into Windows 2000. It recognizes the card perfectly.
> > >
> > > Seems to be a Vista bug for sure.
> > >
> > >
> > >

I don't know if any of the following is of direct help but I'm posting
it as a general warning for those that use SD cards both in their
camera and in a PC.

In any case have a look at this Panasonic utility:

http://panasonic.jp/support/global/c...formatter.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------

SD Memory Card Formatting Software

Software Description
This software formats SD Memory Card and SDHC Memory Card(SD/SDHC
Memory Card) using a formatting program that complies with the SD
Memory Card specification SD formatting provides quick and easy access
to the SD Memory Card.

Generally, SD/SDHC Memory Card file systems formatted with generic
operating system formatting software do not comply with the SD Memory
Card specification.

It does not seem to be limited to Panasonic cameras and cards -- since
it says it formats to the SD Standards and there's a compatibility link
on the webpage that leads to a listing of compatible cards from many
different sources.

There's also a link to download the formatter.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

There's a lot of technical information about SD and SDHC here:

http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/special-sd.html

and one can see from the progression of SD and SDHC versions that there
could easily be differences between the SD format and the PC format.

In another document it mentions that SDHC has several versions 2, 4, &
6 which indicate the transfer speed.

Hope that helps. If I were you I would download that formatter, usse it
on the SD card and see if that changes the situation. I'd refrain from
formatting outside the camera if you can unless you are just going to
use the SD card as flash memory for the PC.

I did have a what-might-be-similar problem with some Crucial 512MB CF
cards which would not reformat in the camera and when I called Crucial
on this they said they had had some reports of this happening and to
return the cards if I wanted to but that it had been found that
formatting the card in the PC and then re-formatting in the camera
seemed to overcome that one.

huwyngr:

Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my post. Fortunately, my camera will
format the card even though Vista will not. As you probably saw in my other
posts, W2k and XP, neither with any 3rd party help, will format the card. So
it seems to be a Vista problem. Since this newsgroup has many other posts
with SD card problems, I guess that the MS Vista team knows the situation and
is working on it.

In my case, Vista Premium will not even recognize that the card has anything
on it. In fact, it simply throws up its hands at the unknown card and
presents a dialog box asking to format it.

At the end of the posts here is a button for sending an opinion on whether
this response has been helpful. I confess that I have, to this point, been
"unhelpful", in the words of the late departed secretary of defense. I knew
that Vista would have compatibility issues going in. Since software
compatibility has been a problem, Acronis backup wants me to pony up for a
new copy in order to recover my files under Vista. In conclusion my "helpful"
vision: Install Vista as a "clean" install, but in the process, keep your old
copy of Windows on the PC. Vista will allow you to do this and it very nicely
presents the option on boot as "Start a previous version of windows". If you
need to run software that was licensed and running under that previous
version, you will be able to run it, perhaps restore some data, and save some
money in the bargain.

Hope the double boot suggestion was helpful. And there will be a service
pack 1.

bigwater


"huwyngr" wrote:

> I don't know if any of the following is of direct help but I'm posting
> it as a general warning for those that use SD cards both in their
> camera and in a PC.
>
> In any case have a look at this Panasonic utility:
>
> http://panasonic.jp/support/global/c...formatter.html
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> SD Memory Card Formatting Software
>
> Software Description
> This software formats SD Memory Card and SDHC Memory Card(SD/SDHC
> Memory Card) using a formatting program that complies with the SD
> Memory Card specification SD formatting provides quick and easy access
> to the SD Memory Card.
>
> Generally, SD/SDHC Memory Card file systems formatted with generic
> operating system formatting software do not comply with the SD Memory
> Card specification.
>
> It does not seem to be limited to Panasonic cameras and cards -- since
> it says it formats to the SD Standards and there's a compatibility link
> on the webpage that leads to a listing of compatible cards from many
> different sources.
>
> There's also a link to download the formatter.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a lot of technical information about SD and SDHC here:
>
> http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/special-sd.html
>
> and one can see from the progression of SD and SDHC versions that there
> could easily be differences between the SD format and the PC format.
>
> In another document it mentions that SDHC has several versions 2, 4, &
> 6 which indicate the transfer speed.
>
> Hope that helps. If I were you I would download that formatter, usse it
> on the SD card and see if that changes the situation. I'd refrain from
> formatting outside the camera if you can unless you are just going to
> use the SD card as flash memory for the PC.
>
> I did have a what-might-be-similar problem with some Crucial 512MB CF
> cards which would not reformat in the camera and when I called Crucial
> on this they said they had had some reports of this happening and to
> return the cards if I wanted to but that it had been found that
> formatting the card in the PC and then re-formatting in the camera
> seemed to overcome that one.
>
>

In article <533FAD90-7C59-4A97-9A4C-8AA675359FC8@microsoft.com>, Bigwater
wrote:

> In my case, Vista Premium will not even recognize that the card has anything*
> on it. In fact, it simply throws up its hands at the unknown card and*
> presents a dialog box asking to format it.

I guess you should count your blessings that it does ask before doing it!

I don't have any SD cards so I can't even try to see if it happens to me or
not.

You might consider asking in the Photographic forums attached to
www.dpreview.com or to Steve's Digicam forum -- Google should find them if you
don't already know them. They are invaluable sources of information on
photographic matters.

There is also a Photography Forum on Compuserve that you could try:

http://community.compuserve.com/n/pf...ws-photography

Good luck -- I'll keep my eyes open.

I am embarrassed that I have found the simplest solution to reading the SD
card from my Nikon D40: just leave the SD card in the camera and plug the
camera into the computer. Works great. Nikon seems to have gotten the SD card
situation under control. I may not be able to see the SD card in the card
reader, but I can see it fine when it is in the camera connected to the
computer. Didn't have to load any Nikon software, either.

Thanks again for your assistance.

Bigwater

"huwyngr" wrote:

> In article <533FAD90-7C59-4A97-9A4C-8AA675359FC8@microsoft.com>, Bigwater
> wrote:
>
> > In my case, Vista Premium will not even recognize that the card has anything
> > on it. In fact, it simply throws up its hands at the unknown card and
> > presents a dialog box asking to format it.
>
> I guess you should count your blessings that it does ask before doing it!
>
> I don't have any SD cards so I can't even try to see if it happens to me or
> not.
>
> You might consider asking in the Photographic forums attached to
> www.dpreview.com or to Steve's Digicam forum -- Google should find them if you
> don't already know them. They are invaluable sources of information on
> photographic matters.
>
> There is also a Photography Forum on Compuserve that you could try:
>
> http://community.compuserve.com/n/pf...ws-photography
>
> Good luck -- I'll keep my eyes open.
>
>

I'm glad you found that workaround -- I should have asked.

Note that I've posted to someone else a reference to a MS Hotfix for SD
Card problems so you may want to follow that up -- there is a file you
can download from Microsoft although I won't say it will fix your
particular problem at least it shows MS knows about SD problems.

Here's the gist of it:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Availability of the Windows Vista Secure Digital (SD) hotfix rollup
package

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b/933847/en-us

However there's a note inside that KB article indicating that it's been
replaced by:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825/

which includes download instructions for 32 bit and for 64 bit
versions.

I found the first KB in a thread Google turned up at:

http://www.austech.info/showthread.php?p=1145756

which also indicated that having ReadyBoost set to ON might affect
this.
------------------------------------------------------------------