Hi. I just had a custom pc built for me a few weeks ago. It has a floppy and card reader, and is configured in a dual boot with win vista home premium and win xp media center 2005. After installing both windows versions, everything was working fine until about a week and a half ago. Now the media reader won't show up in my computer, neither in vista nor xp. I asked the builder and was told that it was an issue with my other connected usb drives(hdd and dvd-rw). After disconnecting them until after bootup, the reader showed back up, but now it's gone again. Is there any way to assure that windows will recognize my card reader? Thanks! My system config is: Asus P5N-E SLI Intel core 2 Q6600 2 GB DDR2 800 Evga 8800GTS X-fi Extreme Gamer Hauppauge winTV 1800 2 500GB hdd - no raid, 4 partitions, vista on one phys. drive, xp on the other sansung writemaster DVD-rw, internal floppy drive, internal 9 in 1 media card reader, internal External 320GB hdd External Lite-on 20A1P DVD-rw
Is this custom PC builder you speak of a licensed professional shop? If so, you should be able to return the PC to him and have it repaired free of charge. At least this one time. Sounds like you had a driver conflict with the USB device you had plugged in. Did you get the Media Center to work again? Have you checked Device Manager for driver issues? Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the USB Universal Host Controllers.
As mentioned, if the PC's less than a year old, the person who sold it to you should repair it. The P5N-E SLI board is known for having issues though, and USB is one of them, it may potentially be a problem with the USB header the card reader's attached to. As for other USB drives, you have a hard drive and DVD drive attached over USB? That's very unusual, they will both be external drives if that's the case.
Thanks for the replies. It must be an issue with the usb header. If I open the case and tweak on the connector, the reader shows back up and remains for a few days. Then it disappears again. I got the pc on ebay from Magic Micro. They have a great rating(8700+, 99.9% pos.) and they have a website too. The PC came with a 3 year warrantee, so I'm gonna call then om monday.
