Could be a power settings issue. Plug an SD card into the reader and open Device Manager. Find the SDHC entry under Disk Drives and double-click it. Then click its Policies tab and select Quick Removal and uncheck Enable Write Caching, if it's enabled.
Now expand the list under USB in Device Manager and double-click a USB entry. If the entry has a Power Management tab, click it and uncheck the box "Allow PC to turn off..". Repeat for all USB entries that have the Power Management tab.
Next, open the Win 10 Power & Sleep screen. Click Additional Power Settings. On next screen identify the active Power plan and click Change Plan Settings. On next screen, click Change Advanced Power Settings.
On that last screen, disableHibernation, Hybrid Sleep, USB Selective Suspend, and PCI Express Link State Management. Be sure to save the changes to the Power plan and reboot.
Thanks for your response Ron. The problem is new. The computer is just over two years old. I have only recently had this issue.
I went through your list of changes, and rebooted. Unfortunately the problem persists. You simply cannot perform a continguous transfer to or from the SD card.
unlike older XPS or other older Dell PC that use generic OEM 3.5" SD reader with a USB 2.0 (9 pin) cable connection to motherboard USB 2.0 (9 pin) header, 8930 appears to use proprietary card reader header on motherboard (#10 media card reader connector (CARD_READER))
Not certain the card reader is a USB device here. If there is no solution yet, and you hope it is not a hardware defect in either the reader itself or motherboard header, you may consider do a fresh clean install of OS, or factory reset to original OS that came from Dell. You would wish that this is a software bug from two years of use and perhaps a bug from "wear and tear" of a once pristine software world. If problem goes away you have a solution (though do not know what bug it was). If the problem persists in brand new OS, then you know it is more likely hardware. If that was the case, either live with it or consider replacing the reader for further test.
The SD card reader is a USB device on the XPS 8930.
It's listed on my XPS 8930 (i7-9700 CPU, 16 GB RAM) in Device Manager under USB as "Alcor Micro USB 2.0 Card Reader", but it only appears after an SD card is inserted. And it's also listed in Device Manager under Disk Drives as "SDHC Card", again only after a card is inserted. Don't know if you have the same reader or a different brand/model reader.
I updated to Win 10 Pro v20H2 just this past weekend and Windows Update pushed Alcor Micro Corp USB driver v2.0.150.10135 at me. This driver is listed in the Microsoft catalog for Alcor SD readers.
Device Manager shows Microsoft driver 10.0.19041.1 for SDHC Card under Disk Drives and Alcor driver 2.0.150.10135 for Alcor Micro under USB. If you have an Alcor SD reader, you should check Device Manager to see which drivers you have, and possibly update if it's an Alcor reader.
I just copied a 333 MB file from my HDD onto an 8-GB Kingston SD card and it transferred without any delays at average speed of ~5 MB/sec with no delays in ~1 min.
Questions:
Are you running Win 10 v20H2? If yes, it should be clean since it replaced whatever previous version was running.
What version of BIOS?
Are all your drivers really up-to-date? IMO, SupportAssist is "iffy", at best...
What size files are you transferring?
What's the source, HDD, SSD, or... ?
How much free space on source drive and on SD card?
How much RAM in PC?
Is Win 10 recognizing all RAM? Click Start>Run and enter: msinfo32.exe and click OK. What does it say about installed RAM and availability in the System Summary?
Have you run diagnostics on the PC lately from the F12 boot menu?
In this case the reader is listed as Generic- SD/MMC/MS PRO USB device under Disk Drives, nothing more specific under USB. Variety of transfers to many different cards have been tried from SSD and HDDs, cards with FAT32 and NFTS formats. Files range from 100 MB to 9 GB. All of these cards work fine with other computers and devices with sizes of transfers.
BIOS is 1.1.15 and I have Win 10 v20H2, 16 GB RAM with 9 GB showing available physical, CPU is i7-8700. No issues found in F12 diagnostics, and no malware found.
What Microsoft driver version is listed for the reader under Disk Drives?
Did you check to see if the Intel chipset and Intel Serial I/O drivers etc are up-to-date? Serial I/O is involved in data transfer between devices...
Dell's Support site doesn't list the SD card reader on the System Config page for my XPS 8930 but you might check yours by entering the Service Tag on the Support page and clicking the System Configuration link. Or run msinfo32.exe with a card in the reader and see if it's identified more specifically on the Storage>Disks screen.
Alternatively, open Device Manager and open the USB entry for the reader. Click the Details tab and look for the hardware ID which will be in the form: USB\VID followed by a string of numbers and letters. Google that ID and see if it identifies the reader and if there's a recent Win 10 driver available. Always manually set a System Restore point before installing any drivers so you can quickly revert if something goes wrong. If you don't have an Alcor reader, I'd suspect it's RealTek.
You seem to have a lot of stuff running if you have 16 GB RAM installed and only 9 available. So as a test, you could disable things on the Startup tab in Task Manager and reboot to see if that makes any difference in transfers to the SD card. Just don't disable anything related to audio, video, security, mouse etc.
Updated the two Intel drivers mentioned, no effect.
No references to anything other than a generic reader in the configuration information. Did find string in Events section for the generic SD drive Parent Device: USB\VID_0BDA&PID_0177\20121112761000000. Google search does bring up a reference to Realtek, but no specific model or driver. MS Driver Update insists current driver is the best available.
It does not seem to be a driver issue. I have seen similar glitches in USB flash key file transfer process, that the progress bar does not move smoothly to the end. It is as if PC cpu is distracted away from the task. It could be anything causing pc to temporarily hang up the transfer of data from media card to memory. your issue seems more severe.
The complaint above was only solved by replacing the motherboard, which isn't going to happen here (warranty is expired for one thing). All other USB operations, including external USB drives and USB memory sticks work fine.
Unless you're missing the right driver for your card reader...
Did you ID the card reader in your specific PC and see if there's a driver available somewhere?
Dell doesn't mention a driver for the Alcor card reader that's in my XPS 8930, or for any other SD card reader they may have installed in the XPS 8930, but Microsoft offered the driver to me right after I updated to Win 10 v20H2...
If you think something has failed, you'll have to learn to live with it, or maybe just buy yourself an external USB3 card reader and plug that into the PC for transferring files to/from your SD cards.
Windows says the best driver available is installed. I don't know how to force something else to be installed. The device is not identified by brand in the system, other than the hardware ID posted earlier suggesting it's made by Realtek.
You could try installing the RealTek SD card reader driver for Windows from here. Download it onto your PC. Then manually set a System Restore point to be safe. Next, double-click the download and if it installs, see if it resolves your issue. Note: If Windows complains that it's not from the Microsoft store, install it anyway.
If the RealTek driver doesn't help, you can always use that System Restore point to remove the driver...
Thanks again Ron. I was able to install the Realtek drivers from the site, and the reader shows up as a Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader under "USB Controllers" in Device Manager.
Unfortunately, the performance issue has not improved. I have purchased an external Sandisk ImageMate Pro USB 3.0 multi-card reader, which works fine.
It would be still nice to get the internal one working properly if it's an easy fix, but otherwise ...
So a bit of progress. Surprising Dell doesn't offer the RealTek SD card reader driver on the Support page.
When the Realtek reader appears under USB in Device Manager, how does is it listed under Disk Drives and under Portable Devices? If any of these entries has a Power Management tab, make sure the box "Allow PC to turn off..." is unchecked.
Does msinfo32.exe list anything about the card reader under Problem Devices?
I suppose you could create a new System Restore point and then right-click an duninstall the Realtek reader under USB. And then click Action>Scan for hardware changes and see what happens. And if necessary, install the Realtek driver again.
At least your new plug-in card reader is working properly...
RoHe
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December 28th, 2020 17:00
Is this a new problem?
Could be a power settings issue. Plug an SD card into the reader and open Device Manager. Find the SDHC entry under Disk Drives and double-click it. Then click its Policies tab and select Quick Removal and uncheck Enable Write Caching, if it's enabled.
Now expand the list under USB in Device Manager and double-click a USB entry. If the entry has a Power Management tab, click it and uncheck the box "Allow PC to turn off..". Repeat for all USB entries that have the Power Management tab.
Next, open the Win 10 Power & Sleep screen. Click Additional Power Settings. On next screen identify the active Power plan and click Change Plan Settings. On next screen, click Change Advanced Power Settings.
On that last screen, disable Hibernation, Hybrid Sleep, USB Selective Suspend, and PCI Express Link State Management. Be sure to save the changes to the Power plan and reboot.
Does that help?
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 28th, 2020 20:00
Thanks for your response Ron. The problem is new. The computer is just over two years old. I have only recently had this issue.
I went through your list of changes, and rebooted. Unfortunately the problem persists. You simply cannot perform a continguous transfer to or from the SD card.
redxps630
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December 28th, 2020 20:00
unlike older XPS or other older Dell PC that use generic OEM 3.5" SD reader with a USB 2.0 (9 pin) cable connection to motherboard USB 2.0 (9 pin) header, 8930 appears to use proprietary card reader header on motherboard (#10 media card reader connector (CARD_READER))
Not certain the card reader is a USB device here. If there is no solution yet, and you hope it is not a hardware defect in either the reader itself or motherboard header, you may consider do a fresh clean install of OS, or factory reset to original OS that came from Dell. You would wish that this is a software bug from two years of use and perhaps a bug from "wear and tear" of a once pristine software world. If problem goes away you have a solution (though do not know what bug it was). If the problem persists in brand new OS, then you know it is more likely hardware. If that was the case, either live with it or consider replacing the reader for further test.
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 29th, 2020 06:00
Will look into this as well thanks.
RoHe
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December 29th, 2020 11:00
The SD card reader is a USB device on the XPS 8930.
It's listed on my XPS 8930 (i7-9700 CPU, 16 GB RAM) in Device Manager under USB as "Alcor Micro USB 2.0 Card Reader", but it only appears after an SD card is inserted. And it's also listed in Device Manager under Disk Drives as "SDHC Card", again only after a card is inserted. Don't know if you have the same reader or a different brand/model reader.
I updated to Win 10 Pro v20H2 just this past weekend and Windows Update pushed Alcor Micro Corp USB driver v2.0.150.10135 at me. This driver is listed in the Microsoft catalog for Alcor SD readers.
Device Manager shows Microsoft driver 10.0.19041.1 for SDHC Card under Disk Drives and Alcor driver 2.0.150.10135 for Alcor Micro under USB. If you have an Alcor SD reader, you should check Device Manager to see which drivers you have, and possibly update if it's an Alcor reader.
I just copied a 333 MB file from my HDD onto an 8-GB Kingston SD card and it transferred without any delays at average speed of ~5 MB/sec with no delays in ~1 min.
Questions:
If yes, it should be clean since it replaced whatever previous version was running.
Click Start>Run and enter: msinfo32.exe and click OK. What does it say about installed RAM and availability in the System Summary?
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 29th, 2020 15:00
In this case the reader is listed as Generic- SD/MMC/MS PRO USB device under Disk Drives, nothing more specific under USB. Variety of transfers to many different cards have been tried from SSD and HDDs, cards with FAT32 and NFTS formats. Files range from 100 MB to 9 GB. All of these cards work fine with other computers and devices with sizes of transfers.
BIOS is 1.1.15 and I have Win 10 v20H2, 16 GB RAM with 9 GB showing available physical, CPU is i7-8700. No issues found in F12 diagnostics, and no malware found.
RoHe
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December 29th, 2020 16:00
What Microsoft driver version is listed for the reader under Disk Drives?
Did you check to see if the Intel chipset and Intel Serial I/O drivers etc are up-to-date? Serial I/O is involved in data transfer between devices...
Dell's Support site doesn't list the SD card reader on the System Config page for my XPS 8930 but you might check yours by entering the Service Tag on the Support page and clicking the System Configuration link. Or run msinfo32.exe with a card in the reader and see if it's identified more specifically on the Storage>Disks screen.
Alternatively, open Device Manager and open the USB entry for the reader. Click the Details tab and look for the hardware ID which will be in the form: USB\VID followed by a string of numbers and letters. Google that ID and see if it identifies the reader and if there's a recent Win 10 driver available. Always manually set a System Restore point before installing any drivers so you can quickly revert if something goes wrong. If you don't have an Alcor reader, I'd suspect it's RealTek.
You seem to have a lot of stuff running if you have 16 GB RAM installed and only 9 available. So as a test, you could disable things on the Startup tab in Task Manager and reboot to see if that makes any difference in transfers to the SD card. Just don't disable anything related to audio, video, security, mouse etc.
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 29th, 2020 18:00
Current device driver is 10.0.19041.1.
Updated the two Intel drivers mentioned, no effect.
No references to anything other than a generic reader in the configuration information. Did find string in Events section for the generic SD drive Parent Device: USB\VID_0BDA&PID_0177\20121112761000000. Google search does bring up a reference to Realtek, but no specific model or driver. MS Driver Update insists current driver is the best available.
redxps630
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15.5K Posts
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December 29th, 2020 19:00
It does not seem to be a driver issue. I have seen similar glitches in USB flash key file transfer process, that the progress bar does not move smoothly to the end. It is as if PC cpu is distracted away from the task. It could be anything causing pc to temporarily hang up the transfer of data from media card to memory. your issue seems more severe.
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 30th, 2020 06:00
I am suspecting the reader is malfunctioning. I have seen other threads complaining of failure in this computer -
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-SD-card-reader-missing/td-p/7623146
The complaint above was only solved by replacing the motherboard, which isn't going to happen here (warranty is expired for one thing). All other USB operations, including external USB drives and USB memory sticks work fine.
RoHe
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45.2K Posts
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December 30th, 2020 11:00
Unless you're missing the right driver for your card reader...
Did you ID the card reader in your specific PC and see if there's a driver available somewhere?
Dell doesn't mention a driver for the Alcor card reader that's in my XPS 8930, or for any other SD card reader they may have installed in the XPS 8930, but Microsoft offered the driver to me right after I updated to Win 10 v20H2...
If you think something has failed, you'll have to learn to live with it, or maybe just buy yourself an external USB3 card reader and plug that into the PC for transferring files to/from your SD cards.
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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December 30th, 2020 12:00
Windows says the best driver available is installed. I don't know how to force something else to be installed. The device is not identified by brand in the system, other than the hardware ID posted earlier suggesting it's made by Realtek.
RoHe
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45.2K Posts
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December 31st, 2020 14:00
@z11111111111111111111111111111111 Sorry, I didn't see your earlier post suggesting it's a RealTek SD card reader.
You could try installing the RealTek SD card reader driver for Windows from here. Download it onto your PC. Then manually set a System Restore point to be safe. Next, double-click the download and if it installs, see if it resolves your issue. Note: If Windows complains that it's not from the Microsoft store, install it anyway.
If the RealTek driver doesn't help, you can always use that System Restore point to remove the driver...
z11111111111111111111111111111111
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January 1st, 2021 08:00
Thanks again Ron. I was able to install the Realtek drivers from the site, and the reader shows up as a Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader under "USB Controllers" in Device Manager.
Unfortunately, the performance issue has not improved. I have purchased an external Sandisk ImageMate Pro USB 3.0 multi-card reader, which works fine.
It would be still nice to get the internal one working properly if it's an easy fix, but otherwise ...
RoHe
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45.2K Posts
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January 1st, 2021 12:00
So a bit of progress. Surprising Dell doesn't offer the RealTek SD card reader driver on the Support page.
When the Realtek reader appears under USB in Device Manager, how does is it listed under Disk Drives and under Portable Devices? If any of these entries has a Power Management tab, make sure the box "Allow PC to turn off..." is unchecked.
Does msinfo32.exe list anything about the card reader under Problem Devices?
I suppose you could create a new System Restore point and then right-click an duninstall the Realtek reader under USB. And then click Action>Scan for hardware changes and see what happens. And if necessary, install the Realtek driver again.
At least your new plug-in card reader is working properly...