Recently updated on December 23rd, 2022 at 02:20 pm
If your SD card reader is not working on your Windows 10 computer, you can try the following steps to troubleshoot and fix the issue:
- Restart your computer and check if the SD card reader is working. Sometimes, a simple restart can fix the issue.
- Check if the SD card reader is properly connected to your computer. Make sure the card reader is firmly plugged into your computer’s USB port.
- Check if the SD card is properly inserted into the card reader. Make sure the card is inserted all the way into the card reader and that it is properly aligned.
- Check if the SD card is damaged. Try using a different SD card to see if the card reader works with it. If the card reader works with the other SD card, then the original card may be damaged and needs to be replaced.
- Update the driver for the SD card reader. You can do this by going to the Device Manager, expanding the “Disk drives” category, right-clicking on the card reader, and selecting “Update driver.” Follow the prompts to install the updated driver.
- If none of the above steps work, there may be a problem with the card reader itself. In this case, you may need to replace the card reader.
After upgrading Windows 10, many users said that the SD card reader did not work on their computer. When the card reader was inserted into the computer, it said: “unrecognized device” or “device not found”.
This problem can be caused by many reasons, such as a poor connection, disk write protection, outdated driver, or it is possible that the SD card is infected with the virus or malware.
Usually, you can choose to disconnect the card reader, restart your computer and re-insert the SD card reader. This is one of the foolproof ways, but sometimes it doesn’t work.
Check your hardware
Sometimes the hardware problem can cause an invalid connection, which causes the computer not to recognize the SD card. Therefore, you must first check your hardware, including SD card reader, USB cable, USB port and SD card.
SD card reader: Make sure your SD card reader is compatible with Windows 10.
USB cable: If you are using an external USB card reader, make sure that the USB cable has behaved well.
USB port: One of your computer’s USB ports might be broken, try connecting the card reader to another USB port.
SD card: If the above hardware works well, connect the SD card to another device. If it doesn’t work, the SD card may be broken. If you connect well, you can switch to the following methods.
Note: Improper use such as disconnecting the SD card while reading the card can damage the SD card.
Remove SD Card Write Protection
Sometimes, it’s not the SD card reader that doesn’t work, but the SD card is write-protected. Therefore, if the SD card was previously blocked on other devices, try removing write protection in Windows. You can delete it with Diskpart or Regedit.
Update the SD card reader driver
When the SD card reader does not work on your computer, the culprit behind it could be the outdated SD card driver.
To check if the SD card driver is obsolete, type Device Manager in the search box and open it.
Right-click Disk Drives and Universal Series Bus Drivers respectively > Find Hardware Changes.
Clean up viruses or malware on the SD card
When the SD card has been hidden or encrypted by viruses or malware, it will malfunction, becoming the hidden state, or you will see the error code when you open the SD card. Try the following steps to clear the annoying virus or malware.
Step 1 Type Command Prompt in the search box to open it.
Step 2 Type attrib -h -r -s /d G:-z. and press Enter (replace G with the drive letter of the SD card).
When the virus and malware are removed, the SD card reader should work on Windows 10. If the SD card reader still doesn’t appear in Windows 10, go to the last method.
Run the troubleshooter
The built-in Windows tools device and hardware troubleshooter solves many unknown and potential issues that cause the SD card reader to not work on Windows 10.
Type Troubleshoot in the search box and select Troubleshoot.
Locate Hardware and Devices and click Troubleshoot.
Important:
The Hardware and Device Troubleshooter is no longer available in Windows 10 V1809 or later.
If you can’t find Hardware and Devices, try searching for the command prompt in the search box and type the following line, and then press ENTER:
msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic
When the pop-up window appears, click Next to start troubleshooting.
Click Apply this fix and restart your computer to complete the process.
At the end of the process, the SD card reader is detected.
All in all, the SD card reader doesn’t work on Windows 10 is an annoying problem. Fortunately, we have several methods to solve this problem.
