Windows 7: Need a card reader suggestion (or driver help)

I have a basically nameless, cheap-but-effect PNY memory card reader that I bought five years ago for maybe 15 bucks. On the front it says USB 2.0 card reader, and on the label on the back it says USB 2.0 8-in-1 card reader and a model number of U2CRN-PY.

In XP it works great. In Windows 7 (64), putting an SD card into it results in, after a long time of the spinning blue circle, me getting a Windows message saying I must format the card.

Plugging the same reader and card into an XP box results in immediate detection and identification of the device, and ability to read/write from/to the card.

Problem is not my USB ports in 7. A thumb drive and external hard drive and USB printer all work from the ports in which the card reader is failing. And of course the reader fails in each port.

So I am looking for a recommendation of an inexpensive multicard reader that can handle SD cards (and we have an old Olympus that uses xD cards), and works with Windows 7 64 bit.

OR - a place where I can download a working driver for my existing reader. The PNY site is no help, and some generic drivers I found using google don't make a difference either.

You shouldn't need a driver. Have you formatted the card (and what is it formatted to now?)?

James

I have not formatted the card. I don't think the formatting is OS-dependent. It's more camera-dependent, but even there, I have rotated my SD cards in the house among Panasonic, Canon, Kodak, and Nikon cameras and they've worked in each without formatting, and have been read on computers running Windows 98, 2000, and XP.

In this case, the fact that its data can be read from the same reader connected to an XP machine tells me that it's not the card. Also, I have put the card directly into the built-in reader in a Windows 7-64 laptop, and it's read okay.

Your suspicions are probably correct. Card readers are so cheap these days, at least the likely solution won't be too painful . Not sure why Windows 7 has trouble with the reader, though.

James

Although I wish the reader would work with Windows 7, before I go out and buy a new one (more logistical hassle than cost, of course), I'd like someone reading this, who has an external USB card reader, to recommend that reader to me on the basis of its working with 64-bit Windows 7.

Thanks.

I can verify that this one works:

IOGEAR - GFR202SD - Pocket Card Reader

Although, really, any card reader should work in Win 7 64. But, I would copy any data on the card and then format it to see what happens. Or try a different card.


James

I had to replace two old card readers that gave the same issue in Vista and Windows 7. Newegg.com will have plenty of cheap ones to choose from.

This is really turning into an absurd mess.

My memory card is a Sandisk 2 gig card. Camera a Panasonic FZ20.

I contacted Sandisk after finding people on google saying that their Windows 7 card readers weren't recognizing Sandisk cards. Had a long live chat with tech service, and they had me format the card in the reader.

This resulted in the 2G card suddenly being 1 gig - actually something like 969 MB (bad). But hey, at least now Windows 7 recognized the card in a PNP fashion. I could see it popping in and out of the reader as I added and removed it. And the correct card capacity showed up.

Of course when I put the card in the camera, it immediately flagged it as being incompatible, asked to format it. Once I did I could then take, save, and review pictures in the camera.

But of course putting the card in the card reader resulted in the same issue as before.

Sandisk was no help.

Panasonic (camera maker) was no help when I them on the phone.

PNY doesn't even mention card readers on its web site. You get what you pay for I guess; the reader has worked great and was cheap, but tech support wouldn't be bundled in.

I don't want to even try a new reader or a new card until I hear from someone else who maybe went through the same thing. There are lots of people out there in "google-land" who have had problems with Windows 7 recognizing their memory cards, regardless of card manufacturer or reader manufacturer. But I have yet to read a correct solution to any of their problems.

It isn't an absurd mess, and there isn't anything to sit around and wait for. Older card-readers can easily have issues. You haven't even had to deal with the SDHC issues on top of all this. The solution is to go to Newegg or whichever place you prefer, and pickout a card reader that explicitly says it supports Windows 7. Problem solved. As I mentioned above, I had the exact issues as you. Instead of wasting my time with tech support that I knew wouldn't have any answers, such as Panasonic in your case, I just replaced the card reader. I bought Vantec external USB card reader for $10-$12, and it works beautifully.

Okay, problem solved.

I got this card reader: Newegg.com - Kingston FCR-HS219/1 19-in-1 USB 2.0 Card Reader from Newegg and it works on my Windows 7 machine.

But the first time I plugged it into my USB port, the computer just shut down. No blue screen, just blam, instant shutdown like I'd unplugged the power cord.

When I powered the computer back up (with the device still plugged in), it installed the drivers and I've since been able to unplug it and plug it back in and it immediately recognizes the device and all's well.

But what went wrong that first time? I've never seen plugging a USB device in just power the system down like that.