XPS 420 Media card reader problems

Try this Driver:

Herb Score, You'll find this is a very well known problem amongst XPS 420 users (and others). Its existed for about 12 months at least and so far Dell have failed to come up with a fix for it. In the old forums there were many, many entries (some running to 30+ pages) of people complaining about the issue.

At some point Dell claimed that their engineers knew about the problem and were working on it with Teac - they said it was a static electricity problem and there was a recommendation that you put your hand on the side of the machine case (the metal sides) to earth yourself before inserting the cards - this certainly seemed to significantly reduce the number of incidents although it did not eliminate them completely.

Another suggestion was that the cards should be properly ejected through software before removing them. However the thing which seemed to improve matters most seemed to be Vista SP1 (you did not mention your operating system) - this certainly cured my problem for many months (although I do not use the media reader very much) - however a couple of weeks ago the problem came back all by itself without me doing anything physically with the media reader slots. I then dleted all the drivers, rebooted until i was fed up doing it, disconnected the vales etc - all to no effect.

Then suddenly one day I installed a new update for an HP printer that could be attached through USB or the network and I found the media drives had come back!! By the way my HP printer is network attached - not USB attached like the media drives!

I think the problem is probably bad hardware design, with poor quality drivers and probably a timing issue thrown in for good measure - heaven knows really - literally, because I'm sure Dell does not, and after all this time I don't have any confidence they are going to bother about resolving the issue.

Bernard

Thanks for all the replies.  Bottom line - I'll install the driver and firmware upgrades and live with whatever the result is.

H.S.

Alright, so much for that.  Did the driver first.  It acted successful, but still shows the old 6/?/07 date under properties.  Then I tried the firmware, which failed twice.

Machine is Vista 32bit, SP1 by the way.

H.S.

 Herb,

Sorry things didn't work out for you - my only suggestion would be to load the firmware first - then the driver.  That's the order I did it - and the order recommended by the Dell moderator - and all went well.

Jim

Herb Score,

I'm afraid its the nature of the beast - I would love to be more positive if only for my own selfish reasons, but this device has a mind of its own I'm afraid. Some people are lucky, some are not. One day you will probably be lucky again - I imagine, but in the meantime there probably isn't a lot you can do about it - believe me, I've tried till I'm blue in the face.

On my system which, today, has everything working it says the following in the device drivers

CAB-200 - TEAC, 08/06/2007, 1.1.0.0 - under details there are 2 modules listed, the first is USBSTOR.SYS and is Microsoft 6.0.6001.18000, the second is TEACico.dll and it says provider - not available! File Version 1.1.0.0

Allof the 4 media cards (portable devices) - Microsoft, 21/06/2006, 6.0.6001.18000 - under details there are 2 modules listed, the first is WpdFs.dll and is Microsoft 6.0.6001.18000, the second is WUDFRd.sys and again Microsoft 6.0.6001.18000

I don't suppose that information is any help but it might be interesting to know if you see the same on your system - mine is Vista Home Premium SP1.

regards,  Bernard

Oh, I forgot to mention I have the Nov 29th 2007 Dell Driver and the Aug 18th 2008 Firmware applied.

If the firmware update fails it may well be that its because it is already at that level. I think mine fails now - but it did not fail the first time I tried.

Hello Herb Score, I don't think that would be an issue.

I would uninstall it in the Device Manager, reboot, and let the OS find and install the drivers.

Then see if it works as it should.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again for all the replies.

The firmware updater tells you what version you have and what you are going to, so I'm definitely not up to date.  It also won't let me roll back the driver, so I can't undo that action.

Any danger in uninstalling from Device Manager and letting the computer find and install again, then trying to update firmware?

H.S.

Bernard,

Sounds like exactly the same details as mine.  Actually, I have TEACico2.dll, but maybe just a typo on your part?

Funny that updating the driver doesn't update the driver date shown.

With a date like 21/06/2006, I'm assuming you're Canuckian or European!

H.S. <---- misplaced Canuckian

Alright.  A little tidbit that seems somewhat obvious in hindsight.  If you uninstall the CAB-200, and get agressive enough to check "uninstall drivers" since it didn't work the first time when you didn't do that, you might well end up spending an hour or more borrowing USB mice and keyboards from separate neighbors (walking around in your shorts in the snow) so you can spend all kinds of time around to get your bluetooth versions to work again.

Just in case anyone was wondering, or can enjoy a little chuckle at my expense.

And, after all that, no matter what I do the firmware will not update.

I guess it's time to get the good 'ol XPS support folks on the phone.

H.S.

O.K., so this is for the CA-200 vs. the CAB-200 that I apparently have.  I have no idea what the difference is.  Do you mind elaborating a bit before I give it a go?

This is in response to Dave5 who sent a link to a different driver, I'll add now that I don't see the original post quoted in my reply ( noob).

Thanks.

H.S.

Ouch - wearing shorts in the snow!!  There must be more enjoyable ways to pass the time...

I believe the main difference between the CA-200 and the CAB-200 is Bluetooth support.  Hopefully the good folks at Dell can help you out.

Jim