Hello,
I have gone through many help forums for Dell, laptops, and Windows 7, and done much troubleshooting, so this message explains all the steps I have tried. Please read ahead with patience.
I have a refurbished Inspiron SE 7520 with Windows 7 Home x64.
To my knowledge, my SD card reader has never worked. I first tried to use it after my warranty had expired.
I have Dell Diagnostics installed on my computer and have run multiple PC Checks. The ePSA pre-boot assessment run through all the way through optional hard disk checks had no errors.
From looking at the recommended drives from support, I am surmising that I have a Realtek RTS5179 Card Reader. After installing the driver suggested by the site, Chipset_Driver_H1VVY_WN_6.2.8400.39034_A03, the card reader still did not work. (I always shut off my anti-virus program and run the installation program as administrator.) I thought that I had installed the Chipset Driver incorrectly and tried to install it again. I received a message that the device had not been found. I tried again, and received the message that a problem occurred installing this update package. Then I realized that I had downloaded my drivers one by one through a Waterfox browser, and thought that the problem may had been with not fully downloading the packages, and redownloaded them from Internet Explorer.
I ran the Realtek ReaderChecker and received the following message:
ReaderInfo 1.04
Sorry, no Realtek reader is found!
I run this reader checker every so often to see if things have changed. They have not.
I uninstalled the Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader program. I then changed UAC settings as suggested by another forum in case there was anything blocking full installation of the Realtek drivers. After restarting the computer, I sequentially installed the recommended drivers for the Realtek RTS5179 from the Dell website for my service tag on Internet Explorer, from oldest to newest. I restarted in between installations, checking to see if the card reader would show up on my device manager or if the computer would show :
- Card Reader_Realtek_W7_A00_Setup-WWGKW_ZPE (6.1.7601.39019, A00; released 4/27/12)-->installed
- CardReader_Realtek_W7_X03_A01_Setup-0YP2G_ZPE (6.1.7601.39019, A01; released 8/3/12)-->installed
- CardReader_Realtek_W7_X04_A02_Setup-K1K32_ZPE (6.2.8400.39034, A02; released 1/14/13)-->installed
- Chipset_Driver_H1VVY_WN_6.2.8400.39034_A03 (6.2.8400.39034, A03; released 2/19/13)-->has errors (I have a log)
From the Realtek site, I downloaded USB RTS5139/RTS5129/RTS5179 card reader driver for XP/Win7/Win8/Win8.1, V6.2.9200.39052, released 8/21/13. This installation is supposed to delete any old drivers previously installed. The card reader is still not working.
When I use a program to report in text file all the devices I have on my computer, I do not see anything that I can guess is a card reader.
The card reader does not show up as any device in my device manager, even when I view hidden devices. When I look at the driver details for the different items under "Universal Serial USB Controllers," I do not find any drivers in this category authored by RealTek.
- 2 Generic USB Hubs
- Intel® 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 1E26
- Intel® 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller-1E2D
- Intel® USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller
- Intel® USB 3.0 Root Hub
- USB Composite Device
- 2 USB Root Hubs
I even looked at the properties information for all items under "Disk drives," "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers," "Other devices" (hidden). As far as I can tell, the only Realtek items I have in my device manager with Realtek drivers are a network adapter, Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller, and a Bluetooth Radio CSR Bluetooth Chip.
Is there an .inf file for this hardware so I may try to add it as "legacy hardware?"
Has there been a misidentification of the type of card reader built-in my laptop at the Dell support site?
Thank you for anyone who has read this whole message. I wanted to pose my problem to the forum before purchasing an external card reader. I believe that replacing the internal card reader requires unscrewing too many parts of the laptop for me to feel comfortable doing so, and I do not know where I would find a replacement part.
I wanted to take advantage of the card reader's ability to format SD cards as I am improving the capacity of Androids I use (rooted).
Thank you,
Boukman