Solved Help? Toshiba Portege SD card no longer working!

[soho1]

I browsed the forum and tried some of the solutions, but my SD card stopped working and I could not get the card reader to function again. I don't know why it would have stopped working, but I had been installing and uninstalling some software recently.

After trying to remove and re-install the driver, I still could not get it working. To clean up a bit, I performed a system restore from almost a week ago. Everything is good EXCEPT the SD card reader.

My system is a Toshiba Portege Z835-P370.

If I start > run > D:\
I get "The system cannot find the drive specified."

Under Control > Computer Management > System Tools > Device Drivers
I see IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
- Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller
- Ricoh PCIe SDXC/MMC Host Controller.

Toshiba's driver site Model Content Page shows the SD driver to be a Ricoh driver.
The card itself was readable and still is on other PCs.

Windows 7 pro is up-to-date.

Suggestions? Thanks.

 

[RitualJman]

I had the same problem with my Toshiba laptop, and i downloaded the driver from the Canadian website as i am from canada and it didn't work. So I went to the Toshiba UK website and downloaded the drivers from there and it worked fine. You can try this website from toshiba UK website, It may not be the one that you need but it might work its worth a try it won't hurt anything to try it. Thats how i fixed my Hotkey issue.

Download Windows 7 drivers:


RitualJman

 

[soho1]

I was excited to have a new line of thought, as mine has not worked. I tried installed the UK driver, even though it is not the same model Portege (the 830 is provided, while I have an 835). Still, any driver that works would be wonderful. No effect. Still not working.

Also, some of the other threads on this topic from a year or more back talk about the driver working if disabled and enabled. That is not the case in my sitution.

I noticed that the Windows event manager is not on by default. I am turning it on and going to try to collect hardware messages.

BTW, while everything worked two days ago, the software that I was messing with was CheckPoint VPN, which I was unable to configure to my satisfaction. Having restored the system to over a week ago, I don't know if I would still need to consider a registry cleaner, but I will look for one anyway.

 

[RitualJman]

You could try running a registery cleaner maybe its just a dirty registery Key. I use CCleaner and it works great.

CCleaner - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download

RitualJman

 

[soho1]

Checking that next.

Meanwhile, I ran the Toshiba diagnostics. The diagnostics tested all devices OK except the "FD Drive" which it skipped, noting it could not find it. FD Drive is apparently the name for the SD Card "Floppy drive"? The fact it could not find the device is consistent with the fact Window's cannot either, but sad that a hardware diagnostic would not diagnose that at some level up the software stack instead of reaching down to the hardware. I guess I'm old school. All the programming lessons of 30 years ago are out the window. If we don't know the problem, I guess we don't have to support it, so don't actually LOOK for it? Let's just treat non-working devices as disposable and move on? After all, we already have your money, let's not reduce profit margins with something as mundane as support! I digress.

 

[soho1]

Tried CCcleaner, which did find a number of inconsistencies in the registry.

Tested the drive on reboot. No luck.

Used the device manager to disable and remove the software driver again. Rebooted, reinstalled the proper driver for my model. Still no luck.

Continuing to check some things.

 

[soho1]

Ah ha! Toshiba has a HWSetup utility (v5.01). In the Advanced tab, it is capable of enabling/disabling Intel's turbo boost, enabling/disabling the web cam and also the SD Host controller. Toggled it off and on and now the SD drive is recognized.

Also, for reference, the FD drive is not the same as the SD drive, as the hardware diagnostic behaviour is still the same. That is, FD is skipped. This tells me the SD drive is not even tested by diagnostics, a real shame.

But I'm smiling as the SD card is again working with Windows 7. Problem SOLVED.