Card reader not working in Windows 10 on Dell Inspiron 3650 desktop

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I purchased this Inspiron 3650 in 2016. As usually happens with computers, it had become very slow in recent months. About two months ago I replaced the 1TB SATA drive with a 2TB SSD and did a clean install of Windows 10. Everything was fine until today when I inserted the micro-SD card from my DJI drone into my full-size SD card adapter and plugged that into the card reader on the front panel of the computer. Normally within 10 seconds the computer makes that noise indicating it sees a new device and the SD card appears in File Explorer. But today…crickets and it didn’t appear. Device Manager shows four devices with bangs under “Other devices” (see screenshot). I went to the Dell support site and downloaded Dell Assist. It found found some drivers and installed them (see screenshot). I also installed the Dell Update app, which found a network interface driver and installed it but this didn’t affect the Device Manager display or make the SD card show up. Fortunately I was able to use my typical method of leaving the SD card in the drone, powering up the drone and connecting it to the computer via USB cable to transfer the pictures but I would like to get the card reader working.

BTW, before the clean install of Windows 10 the card reader worked fine.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Don

 

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My first guess is it’s a device driver problem.  I’m no friend of Microsoft-supplied device drivers for anything as I’ve had to un-do their updates multiple times and reinstall the original drivers.  Try removing the driver for it via ‘device manager’ and see if that fixes it when it’s rebooted.  If not, you should be able to find the drivers on the Dell web site for your computer and download and install those.

I also used to get the same problem every now and then when using SD cards with the built in front panel slot in the ‘USB everything-panel’ I installed when I built the computer.  I replaced the panel when I bent the pins in the CF card slot (my camera uses both), and the problem cropped up again.  I gave up and simply bought a SD card to USB adapter ‘stick’ for a couple bucks on ebay.  I also bought a combined CF & SD to USB adapter that I use whenever I’m processing images from my camera.  My latest computer build has NO CF/SD/eSATA connectors on it.  USB only!

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Looks like you need the Realtek Card Reader driver (and the Intel Chipset driver for the other missing devices), available from here:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/inspiron-3650-desktop/drivers

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I had already gone to that page but it seems I missed the chipset driver dated 25 Mar 2020. I installed that and it removed the bangs from all but one entry in Device Manager. Please see screenshot. I’ve attached a PDF showing other drivers I have installed or tried to install (some failed as they were older than what I have). I don’t think any other drivers on that page are relevant but if someone knows one that will get rid of the last bang, I am willing to try it.

Any more help would be appreciated.

Don

 

 

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Needs a fair bit more driver wise. SM bus = system management bus (so when that’s working all the various sensors and fans will come to life and power management will become more active..). Suggest going to Dell support and using the check for updates could make life easier by covering the non Windows and dell software updates as well. If you get things installed you “can’t uninstall” there are ways, post back again..

For fullness (as this isn’t for the less experienced which if this is makes no sense to you, I mean go with the first suggestion!)) the other option with a lot of Dell machines is to use the recovery image (which you can still do if you replaced the drive, you just need to drive the process manually and have the ability to connect the original drive to the machine). Inspect the partition layout on the old drive; the Windows partition needs to be in the same place in the partition layout on the new drive in the order for the image to work. You’ve Windows installed so you shouldn’t have and boot problems as Dell have used UEFI for years (you could get an extra boot menu; you can remove that with bcdedit or just ignore it and set the time for the option to zero or untick it’s box in sysdm.cpl, the Windows boot partiton isn’t highly customised and the image is prepared with sysprep such as to expect to sort itself out).

You’ll need a USB caddy to fit the original drive, recovery media (USB media is good, any version this decade) and probably to make some notes on DISM.. starting with the /apply-image option..). You could fit both drives in the machine and do it but you have to be REALLY CAREFUL if you do as it’s so easy to get the wrong partition so be sure you have a good backup of your stuff elsewhere before doing anything..

To do that most cases you back up what you need to keep (as you’ve just reinstalled I’m hoping that’s a small job..), boot recovery command prompt from external media (you might need a Bitlocker recovery key) and format the Windows drive (If you had to use a recovery key, chances are you need to do that format from within diskpart, but hopefully your machine is a little too dated for that) and plug in the old drive in a USB caddy and wait a bit.

In diskpart, assign the last partition on the old drive (1) a drive letter and see what you have. It varies, but as Dell seemed to abandon the “make your recovery DVDs” part of owning a PC before my time (so there are usually no split SWM files to recombine), you can usually find a collection of WIM files in a folder on that partition (which is sometimes hidden..) and the biggest one is the recovery image. You apply that to the formatted C drive (applying over will refuse to work..), wait until the drive activity stops, remove the USB drives, reboot and hope.

The other less arduous route only available if you can get into Windows on the original drive is to use pnputil to export the drivers and import them into the new install, but given the possible link between malware pollution of the driver pool and a slow machine I’m less inclined to suggest it here, going with fresh OEM drivers as initially suggested is safer.

That said the pnputil tool is also useful for prising off problem drivers as well- you can tell as the creation dates of their INF files correlate with the arrival of the problem updates… (pnputil /delete-driver)

 

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Right click on the problem device and select Properties > Details.
In the dropdown, select Hardware Ids
Search for the top ID to find out what the device is.

cheers, Paul

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Snoopdon

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I searched for the hardware ID and found this page:

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives-Media/USB-2-0-CRW/td-p/4047016

I visited the link provided by Dad_Of_Four (3rd post from top) and downloaded the driver and ran the exe. Oops, Dell drivers had asked me if I wanted to install or unzip so I thought this one would also. It installed the driver so now I have a Lenovo driver installed on my Dell Inspiron. The card reader now works. I figure if the driver is from Realtek it may actually be the identical driver I would have gotten from Dell so I’ll call it good.

Thanks,
Don

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Here’s the latest Realtek USB Card Reader driver from Dell – version 10.0.22000.31270 A00 {direct link to the download from Dell}

works on recent Windows 10 & Windows 11 versions, even on my family’s old Dell Inspiron 620 desktop computer which uses an internal Realtek USB card reader device and resolving that “USB 2.0 CRW” device in Device Manager

1 user thanked author for this post.

Snoopdon

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EP wrote:

Here’s the latest Realtek USB Card Reader driver from Dell – version 10.0.22000.31270 A00 {direct link to the download from Dell}

works on recent Windows 10 & Windows 11 versions, even on my family’s old Dell Inspiron 620 desktop computer which uses an internal Realtek USB card reader device and resolving that “USB 2.0 CRW” device in Device Manager

Ok, I installed that driver and the card reader still works so now I am 100% Dell again!

Thanks,
Don

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This was the solution thanks buddy although i remember downloading realtek driver but somehow it didnt get installed but the one you provided works just fine, thank you again
Regards,
Ray

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