ASUS Laptop and reading microSD card for 436HP

[AA6IO]

I have 6 computers (desktops and laptops) around the house and office, all running Windows 7, and all have no problem reading microSD card from x36HPs except in one case.
My lightest computer (weight wise) and the one I prefer to take on trips is an Asus (U46E series). It will not seem to recognize the 4 gb microSD card in either 436HP or 536HP. If I connect my HomePatrol with 2 gb card usiing same USB cable (have tried several), no problems at all reading card.
I would like to set up x36HP Sentinel on this laptop, but obviously difficult given above situation. Anyone else experienced any computers that can't seem to read some microSD cards. Can't seem to find any 2 gb cards at local outlets like BestBuy, and really don't want to take card out of 436HP to use with a card reader.
Any ideas.

Thanks
Steve AA6IO

 

[jaspence]

Laptop won't read card

I went through this recently with another brand of laptop. I went into the device manager and deleted a USB choice that had a question mark. The computer found the missing driver on reboot, and is working fine. Yours may not be as obvious, but look under Universal Serial Bus Controllers for any strange or bad drivers.

 

[AA6IO]

jaspence
Already checked that and did so again after your post. No luck.
Thanks anyway.
Steve

 

[JamesO]

Make sure there is not a power saving setting for the USB port that is in a Power Saving mode. Many of the Power Saving features needs to be disabled on laptops to keep from having issues.

Also try a known good USB flash drive on the laptop to make sure there is not a problem with the laptop USB port.

Also check each USB port individually. I have seen laptops that had problems with specific USB ports due to bad BIOS or Firmware.

Also check the ASUS website for BIOS, driver and firmware updates.

If you really think the SD card is an issue, just get a larger 4-8 GB SD card.

 

[AA6IO]

James
All my other things, including SDR radios (Perseus, ELAD FDM-S2, FunCube Dongle) and all USB flash drives work on every USB port of the ASUS in question. Its precisely any SD card larger than 2 Gb that won't work on any of the USB ports. None of the USB ports will read any SD card bigger than 2 Gb (the ones for my HomePatrol).
However, I will check the ASUS website for BIOS, driver, and firmware updates and see if this makes any difference. I see some comments on Google about SD card reading problems with ASUS, but can find no real answers. Will keep you posted if it works.

Steve AA6IO

 

[JamesO]

James
All my other things, including SDR radios (Perseus, ELAD FDM-S2, FunCube Dongle) and all USB flash drives work on every USB port of the ASUS in question. Its precisely any SD card larger than 2 Gb that won't work on any of the USB ports. None of the USB ports will read any SD card bigger than 2 Gb (the ones for my HomePatrol).
However, I will check the ASUS website for BIOS, driver, and firmware updates and see if this makes any difference. I see some comments on Google about SD card reading problems with ASUS, but can find no real answers. Will keep you posted if it works.

Steve AA6IO

The 2GB SD card issue sounds rather strange. Storage capacity should not matter. I use SD cards of all sizes on many, many computes and have never had issues based upon the size of the SD card. What happens with USB flash drives? Is there a problem with USB flash drives larger than 2GB?

Sounds like a formatting/driver/software/BIOS issue to me??? But who knows, I could be wrong.

Unless there is some Win7/Win8 issue with how it handles detected storage and maybe Asus put their own twist in the software on how it detects and handles external storage? I recall there was a setting that Vista and newer could use a USB storage device as additional RAM on some machines. Maybe Netbooks with the stripped down Windows version as I recall as these netbook/castrated Windows OS were limited to 2 GB of RAM.

Asus may not be so bad, but I hate Sony and Toshiba as they think they know better than Microsoft and always rewrite and add their own bloatware to the OS to handle tasks the OS does pretty well and without using additional resources.

Does the Asus have a solid state hard drive in it? Maybe this is part of the issue, the way Asus handles storage on this platform?

Just a few guesses.

Good luck to you on this one.

 

[Jay911]

I have an Asus K56CM with one HD and one SSD, as well as a full size SD slot. This machine was manufactured just as Win8 was coming out, and had Win8 on it from the factory, but I "down" (up)graded it to Win7 Ultimate x64.

I've never had trouble reading my Uniden scanners with it, either through USB or by putting the microSD into an adapter and into the SD slot.

In fact, among Uniden and GRE scanners, Motorola and Kenwood pro radios, and my Yaesu and Kenwood ham radios, the only radio I've ever been completely unable to read was my GRE PSR-800. I had to pull the card and put it in an adapter for that.

 

[AA6IO]

First off, thank you Jaspence, James, and Jay for your responses.

Well everybody, this is really strange. I have diagnosed what seems to be going on, but have no idea how to fix it. My ASUS not reading the microSD cards has nothing to do with card size, it is specific to the BCD436HP and 536HP/
As a test, I put 2, 4, and 8 gb cards in my Home Patrol, and the ASUS reads them all. When I plug the USB cable in and mass storage or serial comes up, I hit mass storage, watch the device manager, and see another USB connection come up as "mass storage" in the devices.
Now when I put 2, 4, and 8 gb cards in my 436HP, plug in the USB cable, and press mass storage, nothing happens on the screen. When I watch the device manager, instead of a new USB "mass storage," it shows a new Uniden serial port connection being made on com port 7.
With all the same size SD cards and 436HP/536HP on my other computers, it comes up in device manager as USB mass storage, and no problem reading the cards.

So basically with the 436HP microSD and mass storage setting using my ASUS, the computer reads this as a new serial connection, it also does this with my 536HP. It reads a new "Uniden serial port on com 7." When I press "serial" on both the 436 and 536, it approrpriately reads a new "Uniden serial port on com 5."
Anyone ever seen this type of thing before. Any thoughts. This seems really strange, and its frustraing because I want to use this ASUS, the lightest laptop I have, for an upcoming vacation. All computers involved in testing are running Windows 7.

Thanks
Steve

 

[AA6IO]

I forgot to add that when I plug in any size USB flash drive in the ASUS in question. No problems, reads it fine, and the device manager shows a new USB mass storage device. Quite perplexing.

Steve

 

[jrrob8]

plug in your scanner, chose mass storage, the computer will show a com port. just uninstall the com port and after you reload device manager it will have disappeared. redo the mass storage bit and it should work. the computer made the original mistake, if it does it again, try again. my Acer did the same thing.

 

[AA6IO]

plug in your scanner, chose mass storage, the computer will show a com port. just uninstall the com port and after you reload device manager it will have disappeared. redo the mass storage bit and it should work. the computer made the original mistake, if it does it again, try again. my Acer did the same thing.

See no problem. I knew it all the time!!!. Really, I had no idea what was going on. But thanks jrrob8. Did exactly as you said, and like magic, it works. Device manager says "mass storage," and there is the SD card being read. I owe you a dinner if we ever meet.

Best regards
Steve AA6IO

 

[JamesO]

I have had to do something similiar in the past, uninstall the USB drivers and then reboot the machine, go to Device Manager and then choose Add Hardware or Scan for New Hardware and let the USB drivers reinstall. This may cause some issues if you have any other USB things you use on a regular basis, they may have to reinstall the when plugged in, but this should not be a big issue.

Sometimes things go wrong with the auto detection of USB drivers and then this is kept in a registry or memory in the computer and you have to flush and start over.

This is why many times USB is referred to as "Plug and Pray"!

Hopefully it is something simple like this and it will get you back up and running.

Sounds like you are starting to narrow things down a bit.

Good luck.

 

[AA6IO]

James,
Thanks. Yes, now that the mass storage issue seems to be resolved, I already have the Sentinel software up and running on the ASUS and seems to work well. This Radio Reference list is great in my opinion. There is a wealth of talent among many members and its really nice to be able to handle these issues with help from others. One can learn and contribute a lot.
Thanks again everyone.
Steve AA6IO