Inspiron 15 Card Reader Fixed

The Realtek memory card reader on my brand new Dell 15 5000 laptop would not read SD cards.  It's a model 5547 with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit operating system.  I tried installing the updated drivers package from support.dell.com for my Service Code, but that didn't fix it.  I then tried uninstalling it from Device Manager to let Windows just recognize and install it.  That didn't work either, even though in both cases Device Manager under Disk Drives said it was working and would show either "SD" (Dell driver) or "Disk Drive" (Windows native driver) in Device Manager when a card was inserted.  Still no drive or files showing in Windows Explorer.  Dell chat support then scheduled an on-site repair to have a tech replace the card reader.  That was just today, so the repair tech has not come out yet.

However I fixed it already by going to the Realtek website and locating/installing the driver for a Realtek RTS5169.  My installed model is an RTS5179, but I figured I'd try the available driver from Realtech anyway.  Bottom line is that now the card reader works like a charm and will read my SD cards and allow me to download photos, etc.  Just figured out I'd put this post out there in case anyone else is having this issue, since it's obviously not a hardware issue to begin with and the Dell support site driver package is defective, at least on my new Inspiron 15 5000.  Other than that, I am very happy with the machine and everything works flawlessly.

Chashood