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How to Fix When SD Card Reader is not working in Windows 10

I know a lot of users who have upgraded to Windows 10 from windows 8.1 and are in panic after facing the issues thereafter. One of the major issues they used to face after Windows 10 upgrade  is that their SD card is not being recognized or detected by the system. After they insert their SD card, the SD Memory card drive doesn’t seems to be working. Usually this type of symptom arises in case of three major types of issues:

  • System issue
  • Driver issue
  • Device issue

Considering the above types of issues, we have listed out few of the fixes you can adopt to solve the issue.

card reader

Fixes if SD Card Reader doesn’t seem to work

Run Windows Hardware Troubleshooter Utility

  • Click on Start
  • Open settings Tab from the search bar of Windows 10
  • Select Troubleshooting
  • Type Hardware Troubleshooterand click on it to start troubleshooting.
  • If you do this basic exercise, many problems are sorted out automatically.

Update the necessary Drivers

If the first method doesn’t work, you can visit the manufacturer’s website, download the Windows 10 drivers and manually update them. You may also install them in compatibility mode. Other than the manual method, you can also go to Start -> Go to settings -> Select Windows Update.

Here you can select the recent updates available to download. You can download the driver and then extract all. You can run the setup file thereafter to install the driver.

In the next step you can go to the properties section and then select compatibility tab. You can run the program in compatibility mode. Select previous version of Windows supported by the software, from the drop down list. Once your driver is installed, you can restart your system to see if the SD card reader is accessible or not.

Change the Drive letter

  • Open Disk Management
  • From Action > All Tasks > Select Change Drive letter and Path
  • If there are no drive letter assigned, add a drive letter and path

Other Possible Fixes

  1. Fix card or card reader problem:

Sometimes the issue is with the card itself. If the card is damaged or corrupt, it will not be recognized by the system. To cross check your doubt, you can try the same card in a different PC. If the problem persists then it’s the card itself and not the system. To fix this you may try cleaning the card, or replacing the card.

Just like the card, it may be sometimes the card reader also. At first instance, try cleaning it to check twice. If the problem persists then go with next option.

Read more to know on SD memory card recovery or recovering corrupt SD card data. 

  1. Fix System setting

Sometimes, the card reader is disabled in the settings “BIOS”. Cross verify to make sure that the option is enabled.

Conclusion: Above are the fixes for the issue of unrecognizable SD Card Reader after upgrading to Windows 10. If you have any other issues in mind which is left thereof, please let us know.

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