SD card reader problem

Hoping for some help with this one... I have a mid-2009 13" MBP (2.26, 4 gigs, 1TB HDD, SL 10.6.4) and the SD card reader is not recognizing any of my SD cards (won't mount and also not seen in Disk Utility). The cards are recognized when using a USB adaptor, and also work fine in my wife's MBP SD card reader, so I know it's not the cards. System Profiler recognizes the internal card reader on my system:

Copied from Apple System Profiler:

USB High-Speed Bus:

Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x0aa9
PCI Revision ID: 0x00b1
PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de
Bus Number: 0x26

Internal Memory Card Reader:

Product ID: 0x8403
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 98.33
Serial Number: 000000009833
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple
Location ID: 0x26500000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 500

Also, the card reader is recognized in Windows, but still doesn't detect the card when inserted.

This one has me stumped, so any help is very much appreciated.

MBP, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 24, 2010 1:40 PM

Reply
172 replies

Jan 31, 2012 12:54 PM in response to Luis Flores

Having looked in the slot on my 2011 Macbook Pro with a torch, I noticed quite a lot of dust in there. Used an aerosol air duster, inserted a card and it works perfectly!


I think a lot of you might find the same. The slot is going to pick up dust and debris and it's causing a bad contact with the SD card.


If you've cleaned the dust away and it still doesn't work, try gently wiggling it around too.

Jan 31, 2012 2:00 PM in response to Nalfeindo

Had this same experience - using a Macbook Air 1.7 GHz i5, 4Gb RAM, 256 Flash. SD mysteriously stopped working several weeks ago. Didn't correlate it with install of Windows 7 and VMWare Fusion to access the Bootcamp partition. Did bascially the same thing as this post - boot Windows 7 on VMWare, enable and capture the SD slot for Windows, insert card (it will be recognized), gracefully eject card in Windows, tell VMWare not to map the SD slot and set it to give control of SD to OS X when things are inserted, disable the future capture of SD by Windows. Now, when I insert SD cards in OS X, it recognizes them consistently. Clearly a deep config setting that is slightly confused or not released/re-written when you install Bootcamp and port it to a VMWare Fusion session.

Feb 3, 2012 11:41 AM in response to nwbusa

Since my solution (blowing out the slot) now does not work for me, and I have tried everything else, I tried zapping the PRAM. No go. Absolutely nothing. So many solutions offered and yet I have not tried one that works (and keeps working). C'mon Apple, step up to the plate and find us a solution--one that works for everyone all the time!😕

Mar 2, 2012 5:04 AM in response to 2re1979

I had the same problem after owning my MBP for 1.5yrs. I had ran Parallels for about 1yr of that. Come to find out that is what made my card reader not work yesterday, i uninstalled Parallels and went into the device settings, selected card reader, then unchecked it and it made my card reader work again. Thanks for the advice 2re1979!!! I am now removing Parallels for good and going to do boot camp.



Update: I am unable to remove Parallels as it makes my SD card reader not work again....looks like I have to keep it installed.

Mar 31, 2012 12:47 PM in response to nwbusa

I had the same problem on my black MacBook running 10.6.8. My Kingston 8GB SDHC card, inserted into a SanDisk MobileMate SD+ reader, would be detected in the Finder, but not in iPhoto. I simply deleted the cache in the com.apple.iPhoto folder by going to Macintosh HD>Users>(me)>Library>Caches>com.apple.iPhoto, then dragging the tiny file within that folder to the trash. Empty the trash, restart, and now my 8GB card, when inserted into the reader, automatically opens iPhoto and gives the normal option to Import - just the way it's supposed to.

Apr 1, 2012 5:56 AM in response to DD445

The other problem still remains--not showing up in the Finder at all. This has fustrated me to no end. I can't use my MacBook Pro the way I had hoped to when it comes to downloading from my camera's cards. It has been literally months and months that this discuss has been running and the silence from Apple is deafening!! Where is the renowned customer service and care?

Apr 8, 2012 7:51 PM in response to Blue_eyes

Not sure if this helps but I am having the same issue on my iMac since installing Lion. Not an ideal fix but I put the Disk Utility as an icon on the desktop. (You can find it under Applications/Utilities/ Disk Utility). Each time I put a card in the slot I open Disk utility and select the card then click on the "Mount" icon. It now appears in iPhoto or imovie as it used to do automatically. A pain but a fix until Apple resolves the bug.

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SD card reader problem

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