Built in media card reader not working

Question

I have a HP pavilion dv4 laptop and the card reader just doesn't work :o it used to work in 10.04 though... but it doesn't seem to be working here. Went through many other threads but everybody is saying "it just works out of the box"... :( sadly it doesn't for me... help!

Answer 1

Some ideas:

1. Try a 10.04-LiveCD to verify it still works
2. look with lshw (Console) or gnome-device-manager, if the device is detected and configured with the correct driver
3. try lsusb (as stated above) or lspci to identify your device.
4. dmesg|less (shows the log of the system-startup) may point you to errors if the device is not properly detected

Answer 2

when you put in some media do you get any lights turn on?

Second is it a USB device or other. Try lsusb from the command and see if it is listed. Post the list back on here if you are unsure what is what.

Answer 3

I have hp pavilion dv6000 and the same problem. In case you don't know, thouse card-readers not working in any Linux distribution, becouse it's a close technology. So, all that remains to do, is to buy USB-cardreader.

Answer 4

Try booting with a formatted card inserted in the card reader.

Answer 5

From a terminal, run lspci and look to see if you have a device resembling this:

01:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5289 (rev 01)

If you do, then there is a fix detailed in launchpad thanks to System76:

wget http://planet76.com/drivers/realtek/rts-bpp-dkms_1.1_all.deb
sudo apt-get install dkms
sudo dpkg -i rts-bpp-dkms_1.1_all.deb

echo 'DRIVERS=="rts_bpp", ENV{ID_DRIVE_FLASH_SD}="1"' | sudo tee -a /lib/udev/rules.d/81-udisks-realtek.rules

This will not only install a driver for the device, it will also set up dkms so as kernel updates will incorporate the driver as well. The final line allows for the automount of the card on insert.

launchpad bug #971876