This might not have any effect, but worth trying--change the Power Settings by fiddling with the various Advanced power settings in Control Panel. The new vista power schemes have some odd selections such as power saving by turning off usb ports and select hardware. I've found some settings such as "turn off hard drive" cause blue screens, while sleep and hibernation have hardware disappearing. In my case, my keyboard and dvd-rw drive would disappear after sleep. Also had trouble with the network card not waking which was solved by selecting "allow windows to turn off this device to save power." Then windows knows to turn it back on when waking. This is on the power management tab in Device Manager. Perhaps the card has a similiar setting--I don't have an internal card reader. Check it out.

Thanks for you reply. 

After reading your post I tried to change the power settings but the first time I plugged in the SD card all four drives vanished again.  The Compact Flash slot seems to work most of the time now.

 

John

Tech support had me try that before he had me do the Factory recovery.

John

Don't forget to check the connector at the motherboard for the card reader, they are notroious for coming loose.

It will not recognize the reader on a reboot.  

 

I have to shut down.

Unplug the power cord.

Press  the start button with the cord unpluged.

Plug the cord back in.

Then press the start button.

 

Another way to get the reader drives back is to take the side panel off with the computer turned on and unplug the reader from the mother board and then plug it back in.

 

John

The only other suggestion I can make then is to remove (uninstall) the card reader from Device Manager and then let Windows discover it again on the next boot.

 

Open Device Manager, click on View and select "Devices by connection". Expand the UMBus Root Bus Enumerator and you should be able to see the card reader. The individual readers will be listed below a UMBus Enumerator entry. Right Click on the UMBus Enumerator and Uninstall. Power down and then power up. Does this help?

When the reader drives are not listed in My Computer they are not listed in    device manager either.

John

Follow up on my original post.

 

Called customer service.  The fellow I talked to was very courteous, and very professional. 

 

They are sending me a new card reader.  Will see how it works out after I get it  installed.

 

John

We'll keep our fingers crossed. Be sure to post back and let us know the outcome.