Compaq Presario Not Recongnized Memory Cards in Memory Card Reader

Hello, thanks for reading my topic, and hopefully helping me fix this
little problem. But, I have a compaq presario with a 9-in1 memory card
reader. Before removing my memory card from the drive recently, I right
click in a lower right part of screen where you "unplug" usb devices.
Apparently you are not supped to do this. And now that have unplugged
or I guess turned of the memory card reader. Simply inserting a card
into it will not turn it back on. So I'm up for any suggestions on how
to turn this back on. Thanks, Paul.

 

Rebooting should solve the problem.
If not, go into control panel/system/hardware/device manager and reactivate
the device.

 

Hi.

Another poor soul with a nice fast computer and a built in dead slow Card
Reader.

What you are supposed to do is Right Click on the drive with the card and
select "Eject", but that does nothing for my Presario Reader, the light does
not go out or anything.

Perhaps this is another thing that these USB1 Readers are too out-dated to
do. It does work perfectly well on my SanDiscUSB 2 Reader, which is plugged
into the port on the Presario Card Reader Fascia.

It is a bit of a pain having 8 "Removable Disc" drives showing up in "My
Computer". (I must disconnect the H.P. piece of crap).

I would post it back to them, but I suspect they won't refund on it because
they probably got them for free.

Roy G

 

Eject never really does anything on Windows. You're supposed to click
in the tray and "safely remove" it.

Yet another reason I hate Windows. On my Mac, you just see what you
have a card in. Much better and more intuitive. Guess Microsoft forgot
to copy that from Apple.

 

For once I prefer Microsoft's method. If I plug a reader into the
USB, I want to see the drive appear even if a card isn't plugged
into it. Card readers are considered to be disk drives that use
removable media, just as floppy, CD and DVD drives do. Does the Mac
also hide empty CD and DVD drives? Much better and more intuitive
would be if it didn't, but had their icons "grayed out" or if it
used some other form of highlighting to allow one to know at a
glance whether the drive was empty or not.

BTW, my HP computer accepts up to 8 or 9 different card types, and
does NOT have 8 removable drives showing up in My Computer. Only
three, or four, max. show up. Maybe that's a difference between
Roy's H.P. Presario and my H.P. Pavilion. Whether it's due to
hardware or driver differences I can't say.

 

Hi.

There are 8 drives showing because there are 4 Snail Paced Built in and
there is also my USB2 reader Plugged in.

I am still waiting on anything other than the standard useless reply from HP
about my complaint regarding the Built In USB1 Reader, being not a lot of
use to a photographer. If they don't get their finger out soon, I will begin
to get more than a little annoyed.

As for Macs, and their so called intuitive systems. I can always remember
putting a blank disc into the CD reader, and nearly having to dismantle the
bloody thing to get it out again. Blank Disc = No Disc = No CD reader
Showing on Desktop. So no way to drag it to Trash to Eject.

Different from PCs - Yes

Better than PCs - No

Just a different way of becoming a Pain-in-the-arse.

Roy G

 

Which obviously led to the development of RW drives. I
vaguely recall reading about a problem with early Macs where floppy
disks couldn't be ejected under some circumstances, possibly related
to too much being written to the Mac's hard drive. If I recall
correctly, the floppy could be ejected only after deleting one or
more files from the hard drive.

 

I have already forwarded my opinion of including such a crippled
'feature' in a top of the line system. Not that they will give a hoot.
So, the next time I go to buy a new system, I will remember to check
for such things, and/or not buy HP. Perhaps when they get enough such
messages, they will reconsider dumping their old hardware into the
higher price systems.
In my case, this is no big deal as I rarely use the memory card reader
in the first place (which is why I never noticed the slow speed), but
rather the one in my printer.

 

All the Mac users I knew kept a paperclip handy near their Macs to eject
balky diskettes.

 

Why would you want to see it? You can look in the System profiler
(similar to devices on Windows) and see it connected if you must know if
it's recognized. It should not get in the way if you can't use it
(which you can't without a card inserted).

And, yes, the Mac also hides CD drives too (so does Linux) - why would I
care if I had a CD drive if I can't use it?

That would be useful. Sadly after 20 years, MS Still can't get it right.

I've had different readers show up like that as well - could be a
difference in the drivers.

 

That must have been an OLD system - with OSX it will ask me what I want
to do with it. And the Eject key on the keyboard always works to get it
out.

Most definitely - I use both, get paid to babysit Windows. Yet I come
home to an all Mac house.

 

The reason I'd want to see it is immaterial. A better question
might ask, if I want to see it, why would I want to forego the file
browser (which I have running more than 99% of the time) for the
System Device Manager, which takes many more mouse movements and
clicks to show me what I want to see? Using the file browser, I can
quickly see *all* drives, including hard drives, CD & DVD drives as
well as flash RAM drives at a glance. Using the more labor
intensive Device Manager I'd have to check each drive type one at a
time. Believe it or not, but the appearance of a few empty drives
does NOT get in the way. And if it did, for many people, there
would soon be a menu option to allow empty drives to be hidden.
Your logic also seems to assume that people only use their own
personal computers. But if they use a friend's computer, or one in
an office or library, they wouldn't automatically know all the
devices that are physically connected, and it might be nice to know
that even though the front of the computer doesn't show a built-in
card reader or DVD drive, a USB attached device might be available,
even if it isn't seen.

I can't speak for you. If you have no reason to care, then the
Mac appears to be a good choice for you. For those that do, the
Mac's minimalist approach isn't ideal. Minimalism can have some
advantages, but when pursued fanatically by an, oh ... Steve Jobs,
it can lead to computer designs that suffer from heat problems
because little Stevie preferred stylish, silent computers that
didn't deign to use cooling fans. He might have changed his mind
sooner if he thought that some day future Macs would be powered by
Intel's digital furnaces.

Huh? That's what MS *did* get right, in a sense. The
highlighting of empty drives may be ideal, but what MS does instead
is show next to the device's icon, some information about what it
contains. In the case of a data object (CD, DVD, flash Memory or
hard drive) it shows the Volume Label. So when I look at my USB
attached hard drive, next to the drive's icon, the browser shows
"Seagate NTFS 60GB (K". If a commercial audio CD is inserted in
the CD drive, that has no Volume Label, only "Audio CD (G" is
shown. I don't have a commercial audio CD handy that contains CD
text, but there's a good chance that the browser might display more
than "Audio CD" if it finds such a CD. If a drive is empty, guess
what the file browser shows? Yep, it shows something like
"Removable Disk (M". So it's a bit less clean than if the empty
drives were merely highlighted, but it shows as much or more
information in the same amount of space.

 

Why would I want to see in my computer something I can't use. Why would
I care that I have a CD Drive unless I put something into it? I know
it's there because I can see it. When I put something in it, it shows
up. Works very well for me - I don't have to worry about which drive it
is, etc.

Well, for a USB card reader, it better be seen or you won't even know
where to look. I've been in IT for quite a long time. You'd be
surprised how many people get thrown off when using another computer
only to find the CD drive is not drive D, but E, F, or Z. Yet another
reason to do away with them....

Like what heat problems? My wife has one of the "furnaces" - MacBook
2Ghz. No issues here. It's about as hot as my Powerbook. They get hot
- so what? You have a heat producing chip wrapped in an aluminum case.
Aluminum is an excellent transferrer of heat. Of course it's going to
feel hot.

And don't knock the fanless designs until you try it. Like I said,
I've been in IT for a long time and always built my own PC. Then I took
the plunge and got the iMac (iLamp) and was amazed how the lack of noise
really quieted my office. Makes using a regular computer with lots of
fan noise an annoyance.

That being said, there's something to the minimalist design. It frees
you from the caring of how it works and gets out of your way. Once you
experience it you realize how annoying Windows is. I hate getting
reminded to clean up my desktop, that a network is connected, that
updates are ready, etc. The alerts are very intrusive in Windows - the
way OS X handles it is so much better. For example -when I connect to a
wireless network, the signal in the upper right of my screen shows the
strength. Then it scrolls the name of the network 2-3 times. Then it
goes away. Contrast that to Windows where a very obtrusive balloon pops
up telling me I'm connected to XXX and my strength is YYY. If I want it
to disappear immediately, I must click something.

I use both platforms on a day to day basis and know how Windows handles
it. It's just a suboptimal solution to show something you can't use.
No matter how well labelled it is. If I can't use it, I don't want to
see it.

I liken it to printers - sure they could show you all printers and have
the ones you are not using grayed out. Yet they don't - they only show
you what you have installed. This same logic should apply to the
drives. I don't care I have drives M-Y that are my 13-in-1 reader
unless I put a card in there. Then I care.

Here's another one - I have some combo reader at work hooked up to my
Windows machine. It's a reader/floppy. Sometimes it won't connect
right to the USB (mos likely due to Windows' flaky sleep routines).
Every time I connect it, I get the 5-6 drives. Put something in and
double click it and 1/2 the time you get prompted to format it. That is
very confusing - I have something in there and yet I can't use it.
Every once in a while it will corrupt something.

Ive faced similar situations on the Mac. It doesn't show up on the
desktop. Now I know I have a problem as I have a device connected,
something in the device, and it doesn't show up. I immediately know to
go investigate.


Different strokes for different folks I guess.

 

Why would I care what your preferences are? I have my own and you
have yours. Yours work for you, mine work for me. If you think
about it, this is probably why you're still using a Mac, and why I
prefer to avoid them.

Not a problem when looking at drives using a file browser. Empty
CD or DVD drives are represented by an icon of a small disk above a
drive. The icon used to represent a drive containing a disk is a
large disk with no drive shown. Additionally (as I previously said)
text it added that identifies the drives. So my computer's three
CD/DVD drives are identified by browsers as :

which conveniently reminded me that I had forgotten to remove the
DVD from the F: drive. After removing it, the browser shows:

If those aren't enough clues to aid people using another computer
then they're, well, clueless . . .

So what? As heat goes up, battery life goes down. AMD's
processors run cooler than Intel's. Intel just announced a new line
of CPUs that may close the gap, but those (AFAIK) aren't intended to
be used in laptops, and would make your laptop run much hotter.

But my point had nothing to do with you and the laptop sitting in
your hot little lap. It was about Jobs, and some of the foolish
decisions he made that would later be reversed.

Fans aren't the only things that produce annoying noises. But
poor design is a big contributor to fan noise. Large, slow fans
cool just as well as small, cheap ones, but tend to last longer and
run much more quietly. My old HP computer (Intel PentiumPro CPU)
isn't excessively loud, but when it's running, the fan can be easily
heard. The exhaust is also quite warm. The new HP computer (AMD
Athlon 64 X2 4200+) probably has about 50 times the computing power,
but its fan produces hardly any noise, and the exhaust can barely be
felt, and the temperature is so low that most people might think
it's just circulating ambient temp. air.

I suspect it depends on the vendor's software. My computer
doesn't have a network connection, but when it connects to the
internet, a small popup appears at the bottom of the screen
identifying the connection and its speed, and after a couple of
seconds vanishes. Suffice it to say, OS X doesn't handle anything
better than Windows. Nor are Windows' methods better than OS X's.
They're different, and you prefer OS X's design while I prefer
Windows. Probably not for all of their features, but in general.
I'll have to take your word for it that you find Windows reminders
or alerts "very obtrusive", but I suspect that you're either
overstating the case or are finicky to the extreme. I wouldn't
think that you're a Mac zealot, as there aren't nearly as many of
them around as there once were. But I could be mistaken.

 

I graduated out of Windows and wanted the power of Unix with the
compatibility of the Mac.

Wouldn't it be better if it just disappeared completely? After all, why
do you care you still have an F drive if there's nothing in it?

Not necessarily. Concentrate 50 watts in a 1/2 inch square of aluminum
and you'll probably burn your hand. Take that same 50 watts and
dissipate it over 5 inches of plastic and you'll not get burnt. Same
amount of heat, totally different results. One will feel like a furnace
and the other will barely get warm.

Like what? Fanless designs are great. If you can get away with it, one
less thing to break. Being in IT for many many years, the first thing
to go is usually the cheap $0.25 CPU Fan. They are so cheap that there
is no incentive for anyone to make a quality part.

Hard drives giving up the ghost and unbalanced CD/DVD's also make
annoying noises.

Nothing other than the standard IBM wireless card with XP, SP-1's
Windows drivers. Very annoying.

OSX handles most things better than Windows. Take my Thinkpad - it's a
stock install of Windows. Sleep mode about once a week just
spontaneously reboots on wake (despite adequate battery power
remaining). My Powerbook will sleep and wake for MONTHS without issues.

Then that same machine will sometimes fail to find the wireless network.
It then needs a reboot to clear things up. Contrast that to my PB
that goes between many wireless networks flawlessly for weeks/months.

I've been through all the iterations of Windows, from 3.1 to XP, NT 4 to
2k3. Done the OS/2 thing, and now the OS X thing. XP is the most
chatty and obtrusive POS OS from MS. I don't need to be nagged that
there are unused icons on my desktop. I don't need to be nagged that
there are updates available. I don't need to be nagged about the
wireless network.

I guess I just remember when we worked computers not having them work or
second guess us. I like my messy desktop, can figure out updates on my
own, etc. Guess I just like clean and good, intuitive design.

And this is not even discussing the fugly mess that is the XP default
UI. I guess the only ones MS could afford to do the design was 2nd
graders with Crayola?

 

It appears that I was mistaken.

 

Why? The first thing I do everytime I reload XP is revert it back to
the "normal" Win2k UI.

 

Put down the crayon and re-read what I wrote more slowly. <g>
My "mistake" was in thinking that you might not be a Mac zealot. I
wasn't commenting on your dislike of the XP's new UI, but the way
you chose to express it. For what it's worth, I agree, and chose to
have XP use the "Classic" UI.