T500 with Windows 7 Enterprise (x64) Ricoh SD card reader/slot randomly disappears

[jskang]

I've got a T500 (2082-5XU) currently running Windows 7 Enterprise (64-bit) with 4GB of RAM. I have been using an 8GB SDHC card in the Ricoh SD card reader/slot as a ReadyBoost drive.

I recently noticed that the SDHC card will randomly disappear from the list of devices with removable storage. In some cases when this happens if I physically eject the SDHC card out and plug it back in, the storage reappears. In many instances, I can remove and add the SDHC card repeatedly and it will never show up.

I'm unable to make head or tail of what might be the cause. It doesn't seem to matter if I am coming up from a cold boot or returning from hibernation. I don't use standby mode. I've even gone so far as removing the device driver package and installing it again. As far as I can tell, the latest version for this is at http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-73713. This is what I currently have installed. I've installed it as myself and I've tried installing it with the local system administrator account without any change in behavior.

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Is it possible that it's a hardware problem? I cannot remember if I encountered a similar issue under Vista Business (32-bit) on this same system.

I tried a search but found that none of the results seemed to match this particular situation. But, if someone knows of another topic where this problem has been reported, I'd be happy to chime in over there, too.

Thanks in advance.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

does this problem occur with all SD cards or just this one? also does this when you switch off the readyboost feature?

[jskang]

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lead_org wrote:
does this problem occur with all SD cards or just this one? also does this when you switch off the readyboost feature?

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Thanks for the response.

I appreciate the suggestion about trying another SD card. I happened to have a 2GB card. I put it in and it came up right away. I will have to see if the card remains or disappears when I restart the computer.

I'll probably post something else in a day or so with my results.

[jskang · Accepted solution]

At this point, I think this SDHC card has gone bad. I have a USB SDHC-compatible card reader and I can't even get it to read off that device.

Thanks for the suggestion of trying another SD card. I'm embarassed to admit that it didn't even occur to me to try another SD card. Probably because I forgot I had an extra laying around.