On Lenovo's support page, you plug in your serial number and it takes you to the model's page with documentation, drivers, etc. The systems hard drive/SSD may also have a restoration partition where you can re-image it to the factory image. You can also probably order a restoration CD/USB from Lenovo for a small fee.
The device manager should have the SD card reader listed. If it does, it should find the driver. If the device manager lists all devices but that, with no errors, then the reader may very well be inoperative. Windows really does not have a lot of driver issues these days. You may have a hardware issue. But hit the support page for that system and run the driver installers. Shouldn't take long. If there is a Lenovo Vantage program listed in the utilities, load that for sure. It really helps keeping the system up to date.
Thinkpads are business class machines and have great support, including very good driver support. If you had an Ideapad I wouldn't have responded.
Any of the "automated" troubleshooting or driver search software/processes have been completely useless. I've never once had them find anything (neither on the pc, nor searching online.)
Lenovo vantage says it's all up to date. The automated search on lenovo website support also said the same. Windows update was run first, and it's up to date.
Lenovo system update is also useless; not doing anything.
I had to use the "Manual" option on the lenovo support website to have it even show me what drivers are available, because when entering machine type/model number and allowing it to automatically "scan" it says everything's good. Clearly, everything is not good.
Device manager is incredibly non-intuitive to use, for me anyway, but like I said, it's been quite a long time since I've used it. One problem is, even *IF* it points to a certain component or area as having a *potential* issue, the "name" or terminology (or part, or part's "model number, or whatever it's listed as) is often meaningless - I mean, it's not just telling you in plain english what the "thing" is.
Anyway, the seller said it works/worked. He did a "clean install" (from usb, I think) to the ssd. He recommended I do that over though, and re-do drivers, etc. So now I need to figure that out (ie: how to do it), and just had to find powershell scripts to even get the license key (just so I know it, in case), wow.
I did find something in device manager -finally- that is card reader related, and of course, it doesn't appear to show anything wrong (no triangle with exclamation point, which doesn't mean it's working though - neither does "device working properly" mean the device is actually working properly).
The card reader driver isn't anywhere in DM where any of the many "fix" threads or vids said it should or would be. It's in IEEE 1934 host controllers or something (not looking at it right now).
It shows no issues... I click it: "device working properly"... I go to properties, I choose update driver, I choose search this computer/browse, and let me choose from available, I choose the one with the same name, it says it's done it, or that it's already up to date. And I'm back at square one.
Infuriating.
I have other "ideas", but to annoyed right now.
Thanks for your replie(s)
