Sd card not appearing when plugged in. Only recognised if it is plugged in at startup of the system

[Danny_11515]

Hi, 

 

I have had this issue driving me crazy now. I have an SD card that we use to store photos on and then take off the SD card to use for the social media or anything else for the school. It seems when I built the machine to Windows 11 the SD card reader has stopped responding if the SD card is plugged in normally and it is only detected if you restart the machine with the SD card in it. 

 

I have downloaded and installed the latest drivers for the SD card reader and even used the DELL platform to scan all the drivers on the device for any updates for the system and installed those and it still doesn't work. Has anyone got a solution to this issue. I have pretty much tried everything to looking at the port of the machine closely to see any damage to pretty much uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. 

[flipthebit]

Do you have any security software preventing access to it?

 

[Danny_11515]

Hi @flipthebit, 

 

We use Microsoft Defender and that is managed by SCCM. We did a test with a different machine and that worked smoothly without any issues.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Danny_11515

[Davit2005]

SD card on external USB readeror internal slot? Very unusual they should be hot plug like a USB unless you have the OS running on them, lol. I'd certainly look at the BIOS and drivers.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Davit2005

[Danny_11515]

Hi @Davit2005,

 

This is an internal SD card slot and I have gone over the drivers and seen that it had a different version so I changed it to the most recent and it didn't really change the issue. Checked over the bios and nothing really shows up there for it either so it is really strange. 

[Steve21]

Have you checked if there’s any power saving options on the reader?

 

if it’s one of the internal ones that gets detected as usb etc there are options like allowing the computer to disable it to save power which may explain why it works at reboot

 

Steve

[Fazza]

Personally I'd download the latest driver available for the SD Card reader from the manufactures website and then I'd go in to Device Manager and uninstall the driver (deleting the files if that comes up as a tick-box option) and then install the driver you have downloaded and see if that solves your issue.

[Danny_11515]

Hi @Steve21,

 

I have given this a try and unfortunately this didn't work which is strange. I thought this was actually going to be a fix for me but sadly not. Thank you for the suggestion. 

[Danny_11515]

Hi @Fazza,

 

I have checked the driver and it seems to be a realtek driver from the manufacture and on the computer. I have gone to the website and downloaded the drivers and uninstalled the old drivers to reinstall the new one even though it appeared which is what I was looking for but when I ejected the SD card and then put it back in it didn't pick up. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Fazza]

1 minute ago, Danny_11515 said:

Hi @Fazza,

 

I have checked the driver and it seems to be a realtek driver from the manufacture and on the computer. I have gone to the website and downloaded the drivers and uninstalled the old drivers to reinstall the new one even though it appeared which is what I was looking for but when I ejected the SD card and then put it back in it didn't pick up. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Try looking on the computer manufacturers website rather than Realtek directly and sometimes the manufacturers tweak the drivers a little bit.

 

If that still doesn't work then I'd re-image the computer so there's a fresh install of the OS and associated software on it in case there was some weird software thing going on.

 

Another thing to try is to reset the EUFI/BIOS to Optimised/Default settings.