PCMCIA has vanished

[peegee9]

I have a USR wireless network PCMCIA card which has been working perfectly until yesterday. (Running on a Sony laptop VAIO R600 using Win XP Home)
The laptop was in hibernation and when I turned it on there was a 'blue screen' displayed for a second and then the laptop displayed the Sony logo and I had to remove the battery to get it to re-boot. Since then the PCMCIA card has been dead. The power indicator on the card is not lighting up and the card is not been shown anywhere on Device Manager.

I have rebooted the laptop many times (including removing the battery), performed a Windows System Restore to an earlier point, checked Device Manager, but I still have the problem.

The rest of the laptop is working perfectly.

Help!!

Peter Glick

 

[bcastner]

Its a pretty good bet the card is dead. But the only way to test this is to put a second card in your laptop to see if PCMCIA card services work on the laptop (does not have to be a wireless adapter), and take the wireless adapter and stick it in another notebook to see if it works.

You could have a socket failure, or you could have a dead card, and conceivably you could have both.

 

[bcastner]

There is one thing that may be a factor here that should be a consideration if you need to replace the card. The Sony may be running 5 volts at the PCMCIA card which wants 3.5 volts, or vice-versa. It may due this only at a detection phase, or it may do it constantly. In any case it is not such a great thing for the card.

If you need to replace the card consider a cardbus card instead of PCMCIA. And check with Sony to see if there is a firmware issue that needs to be resolved with the use of PCMCIA adapters.

 

[PeeGeeDino]

The plot thickens . . . I have a CD drive that runs off the PCMCIA slot (the CD drive has its own power source).

With the CD connected, it is dead - no power light or anything. When I remove the PCMCIA card from the slot, the CD powers up!

Thanks for your replies so far,

Peter