Downloading Photos

[nashua]

It seems that my laptop an HP Pavilion with Windows  8.1will no longer recognise when I put my photo card in the slot to download photos to the laptop. I just get a message saying no device found.I have tried with another card but still the same. Would appreciate any ideas why this has started happening.
Thanks

[groom]

Just bookmarking this as I had the same problem with my last laptop which was also a HP Pavilion. I had to resort to connecting the camera by USB lead.

[hallmark]

Without anything in the slots.. can you go to 'Computer' and see what is showing there? Normally you see C drive and D drive... Does the computer see anything else?? It is possible that it still sees a card, stick etc that was removed previously even though it shouldn't... If it does then right click that and go 'safely remove'or 'eject'.... then shutdown and restart computer.

Obviously there's nothing to eject....

[japeflakes]

uninstall the card reader and then reinstall might work
Have you updated to 8.1 or was it supplied with it.  Might not work with 8.1

[nashua]

Thank you both for your replies. I tried as you suggested Hallmark and it also said E drive. I selected the eject option and the CD/DVD drawer opened, I restarted and still unable to upload photos from the card.

Japeflakes, the laptop was upgraded from Windows 8 to 8.1 some time ago and was downloading photos ok until today. I removed the Realtek PCIE card reader as suggested and tried to reload the driver from the internet ( not too PC literate so not sure I did it right) Anyway after restarting it said it was updating 22 items but the photos still would not load from the card.

As I really needed the photo today I resorted to finding the camera lead and uploaded from there, and just out of curiosity I tried again from the card reader and surprisingly it worked. Not sure why .

Anyway thanks again 

[trystan]

You're probably as well to buy a card reader from a 'poundshop' of some sort the next time you are out shopping.

The contacts on memory car readers do stop working at times (they probably pick up fluff, and other muck), so having a cheap one means you can just replace it when it does fail.

If it's any consolation, as a rule I don't use the internal card reader on my laptop, but an external one. I save the one on the laptop for those times I'm out of the house.

Trystan

[hallmark]

Thank you both for your replies. I tried as you suggested Hallmark and it also said E drive. I selected the eject option and the CD/DVD drawer opened, I restarted and still unable to upload photos from the card.

Japeflakes, the laptop was upgraded from Windows 8 to 8.1 some time ago and was downloading photos ok until today. I removed the Realtek PCIE card reader as suggested and tried to reload the driver from the internet ( not too PC literate so not sure I did it right) Anyway after restarting it said it was updating 22 items but the photos still would not load from the card.

As I really needed the photo today I resorted to finding the camera lead and uploaded from there, and just out of curiosity I tried again from the card reader and surprisingly it worked. Not sure why .

Anyway thanks again 

It's just the joy of technology... you might never find out why!!  Anyway it's working now!

Of course there's always the option of keeping a hammer nearby for next time.... and believe me I've been tempted at times!!  :-))