Help with floppy / media reader

[even steven]

I just bought a Mitsumi FA402M floppy drive/card reader and having installed it I can't seem to get it to work. Hopefully somebody out there can help me figure out what's wrong.

From the initial boot after installation all seemed fine, My Computer showed the floppy drive plus two removable storage drives. But when I put a Memory Stick Pro into the appropiate slot, no storage was showing. I figured it might need a reboot, but after rebooting, the 2 card reader drives were no longer showing in My Computer. Floppy drive is still showing, but doesn't seem to detect discs that are in it. When I check Device Manager, I have "Unknown Device" listed under USB devices.

The only way I can get the card reader drives to reappear in My Computer is to turn off the PC, disconnect the USB header cable and then reconnect and boot up again. However it never seems to be able to detect my memory cards and when I reboot it's gone again.

I've tried looking for a driver or a manual online, but I can't find anything. Can anyone think what I might be doing wrong, or better yet have any experience with getting this drive to work?

[killie99]

what motherboard or USB card are you using? I'd hazard a guess that the USB controller is a VIA chip and there lies the root of your problem.......

[even steven]

Thanks for the response killie99.

Motherboard is an Abit AW9D-Max. I've tried connecting to each of the two FB-USB connectors with the same result.

I'm not sure what a VIA chip is, how do I know if I have one, what would be the problem with it and how would I go about solving it?

[kalniel]

It is a bit of a pain this drive sometimes. I can only suggest trying a different USB header and then going into hardware properties and checking what options you've got set for the USB controller.

[even steven]

Thanks for the input kalniel.

What options do I need to check for the USB controller, and what should they be set to?

I went into Device Manager again, and this morning it was giving me a new error. The device was showing up as USB Mass Storage Device rather than Unknown Device, but it was showing up as non-functioning, with the yellow (!).

I tried to reinstall the driver and got an error message "This device cannot start (Code 10)". I tried uninstalling and scanning for the hardware again, and then it returned to being an Unknown Device.

I went down the list of USB Root Hubs and found the one which the unknown device is connected to, and uninstalled that also. When I scanned again for new hardware, I got a pop-up error message from Windows from the notification tray - "USB Device not recognised"

It is telling me "One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognise it". Recommendation: "Try reconnecting the device. If Windows still does not recognise it, replace the device".

Any further help would be gratefully appreciated!

[kalniel]

Well you shouldn't see any errors in the device manager at all. Options to check for are conflicts and power - it should report power available of around 500mA. Aside from doing what it suggests (replugging) or reinstalling drivers it sounds like the hardware might be faulty. Can you try it on a friends computer to rule out the drive? I've encountered a *lot* of problems with USB controllers on motherboards though.

Actually first thing to try might be upgrading your BIOS, incase they fixed anything there.

[killie99]

Pretty up to date motherboard, and it's an Intel, so I really would be surprised if it's being caused by the motherboard. I'd now suspect it's the drive itself, as Kalniel says, try and test it in another pc to confirm if it's thedrive.

[even steven]

Booted up my PC tonight and the drives are back as showing up as Removable Disks in My Computer. Still can't read anything through them though, and I suspect they will disappear again next time I reboot.

Device manager is showing 500mA power available on the USB hub and there are no reports of conflicts. I think my bios is up to date, as I only got the board just before Xmas, but I'll check into that. Otherwise I'll try the drive in a mate's PC at the weekend.

Thanks again for your help guys.