Update: This is by far the most popular post on my site, generally appearing in the top few Google results for related searches. Well, it seems like Dell has finally released an updated driver. Enjoy updating!
A few years ago, I bought my wife a Dell Inspiron 700m on one of Dell’s once-frequent $750-off sales. Total price for a loaded ultraportable? $800. It’s a great little machine with long battery, great screen, and usable keyboard.
Unfortunately, on my recent trip to South Africa, I discovered a major bug: it wouldn’t read SD cards greater than 1 GB.
According to the Dell-hosted message boards, this problem has been reported at least since April of 2005 and no fix has been posted. Not acceptable.
This is a flaw in the driver of 700m’s SD card reader. Dell is programming a new driver to address this issue. Very soon, this would be launched
By: maverick on June 6, 2006
at 7:56 am
Did you hear from Dell directly that they were updating the driver? With the 710 and new 1210, I’m concerned that Dell has stopped active driver development (and it’s been a while since they released their last one).
By: JHM on June 6, 2006
at 8:15 am
I’m at Dell Headquarters in Austin, Texas and I just came across this post and have an update. I’ve been in contact with the engineer in charge of this and received word that the necessary driver update has completed testing and is in it’s final stages. While unable to guarantee an exact date, I was told that packaging is all that remains to be done with the driver and it should be available for download within the next few weeks. I’ll continue to pursue this and return to this thread with any updates I receive but more than likely my next post will be a link to driver. If you have any questions an would like to email me please put my name in the subject line to be sure it’s routed to me.
By: Neil on November 10, 2006
at 6:35 pm
Thanks Neil – this page gets a surprising number of hits, from people with the same problem. I’ll be sure to post as soon as the solution is available.
By: JHM on November 16, 2006
at 10:25 am
It’s funny, today I got a 2gtb card, took some pics, plug the card into my 700m, crapped out. verified with another computer that it is not the card, and i found this site. then i head off to dell, and what do you know, new driver for sd card reader that came out today. downloaded the driver and voila, problem fixed. for the longest time that i did not use SD card, then discovered the problem, then luckily the driver just came out today. on the dell site it said the driver is optional, well, if you have a 700m, this driver is a must. one that can fix this bugaboo….
By: woody on December 4, 2006
at 11:26 pm
Hi, i got my inspiron 700m a few 10 months ago, but they didn´t give me the drivers cd.
I reinstalled my laptop, but i could not find the driver for the SD. I see that you have problems with >2g cards, but i cant read anyone
. Could you help me please, i have already check out in the dell site, and the internet, but not luck at all.
Thank you.
By: finhe on December 9, 2006
at 5:55 pm
Haha, LOL, nevermind, i found a driver already, sorry
and thanks.
By: finhe on December 9, 2006
at 6:03 pm
Discovered same problem last night – SanDisk 2GB Ultra works fine in my wife’s Inspiron 1705 – won’t work in my 700m. Dumbfounded until I saw this and similar posts. C’mon, Dell…
By: Dan on December 11, 2006
at 12:15 pm
I must’ve been looking at Google cached page – I didn’t see woody’s post of 12/9/06. I’ll try the new driver.
By: Dan on December 11, 2006
at 12:17 pm
This is lame….I can’t get my 700m to read my new 4GB SDHC card. This problem has confirmed my intention to buy a thinkpad t61 instead of a Dell this week to replace my 700m.
My 2 cents….the don’t build Dell like they used to. Dell has become the Wal-Mart of computers….cheap, will do the basics, but don’t expect to have your expectations surpassed.
My old Dell Latitude CS/X circa 2000….now that was a tank. My 700m from January 2005 has a grinding fan, my palms have worn away the faux plastic metal on the palm rests and I’ve had to replace my power adapter.
Not bad reliability, but definitely not good enough for me to buy a fifth Dell.
Lenovo here I come.
Thanks for letting me vent.
By: me on August 7, 2007
at 5:29 pm
thanks for the help regarding the SD Card driver. i cam across this while looking for drivers that i needed since my 700m crashed.
how can i recover the software and the licenses that this baby came pre-installed with? The warranty has expired, i do not have any CDs that may have been shipped with it, and still need to make the machine operational.
rgds.
By: Dinosaur on October 10, 2007
at 7:22 am
And 1.5 years later, this site is still useful. I spent a good day trying to find the cause of my 2 GB Kingston SD Card not working after I had taken tons of photographs today.
I was waiting to get online with Microsoft support and was almost ready to report the new SD card as a fake.
And it struck me to check whether it’s the PC. It was definitely not expected because other smaller SD cards worked. Guess you can’t take anything for granted.
By: Alvin Yuen on December 8, 2007
at 6:44 pm
Perfect solution for what ailed my 700m. Thanks for posting this. Dell’s site is useless.
By: stephen on May 4, 2008
at 3:31 pm
Thanks for taking the time to post this link. I googled this page, downloaded the link from Dell and now my sd card works in the 700m.
By: Michael B on May 24, 2008
at 7:58 am
Thank you for this. It really savs my time.
The link from Dell website also can be found here.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R139212&SystemID=INS_PNT_PM_700M&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=JP&deviceid=7271&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=3&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=27&fileid=186169
By: mnop on August 26, 2008
at 11:00 am
I’ve had the same problem with this card in my 700m. I have a Dane Elec 4Gig card. It’s readable in everyone else’s computer, but not “completely” in my 700m. It shows up as a drive, but tells me that I can’t read it. I even installed the latest driver from Dell with no luck?
By: Bob on September 14, 2008
at 8:20 am
Thanks for saving my butt. Before i found you there was a good chance my computer was gonna get thrown through a window!!! (throwing the sd card would not have been satisfying enough)
By: Nicky on December 23, 2008
at 3:34 am
THanks a lot…have had my 700M for 4 years..I know because the 4yr warranty runs out in March. Have never been able to use the SD Card slot till today, thanks to this post I found. Really reinforces the power of the kindness of strangers.
Thank You very much Josh
By: Mani on February 12, 2009
at 10:35 am
Dell needs to get off their arse and update the drivers to read 4gb SDHC cards!
By: Jake on February 18, 2009
at 12:06 am
I think that to read SDHC cards, you would need to replace the hardware reader. Sorry.
By: JHM on February 18, 2009
at 6:37 am
I did the update as onboard sd card reader stopped working out of the blue. Thanks for making the Dell download link easy to find with Google. Now my 2G Transcend card works again, but my new 16G Transcend card does not work. The 16 does work with an USB SD card adapter so it is the Dell (TI brand) card reader that is the problem. Does the Dell TI brand onboard in a 4yo 700m simply not work with cards above 2G? I thought I had it working before, but maybe not.
By: Debra on March 16, 2009
at 9:56 am
I believe that most (all?) cards above 2GB are SDHC. SDHC cards look just like SD cards, SDHC readers can read SD cards, but SDHC cards can’t be read in SD readers. We have the same problem with our 4 year old 700M.
By: JHM on March 16, 2009
at 12:35 pm
i have been wondering about this for a while now and you solved it. thanks a ton!
By: paul on March 30, 2009
at 9:54 pm
Installing the driver fixed the problem and my 700m can recognize a 2GB SD card, however, when I try to access the contents of the SD card I get an error message to format the card but formatting always fails! How can I make it read the card?
By: Iris on June 4, 2009
at 5:58 pm
thnx Joshua for pointing to the new driver… my dell now recognises the 2 MB SD card!
By: anu on July 8, 2009
at 1:48 pm
When is Dell going to wake up and fix the above 2GB problem!!!!
By: keith on January 10, 2010
at 3:19 pm
Keith – cards larger than 2GB are SDHC – a different and newer standard than SD. You would need a new hardware card reader in your Dell for it to work with the newer and larger cards.
By: herzigma on January 11, 2010
at 8:15 am
I see everyone saying thank you for the fix… but I see no place/link to fix this problem. I had to reformat my 700m. EVERYTHING is great (but the SD does not work. I LOVE my 700m
worked for sooo many years. it has been great….
would like to know where to go. Tried the link on aug. 28, 2008….
help ? please…
By: Hfrey on March 2, 2010
at 7:58 pm
HFrey – the driver is still available here: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R139212&SystemID=INS_PNT_PM_700M&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=7271&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=3&formatcnt=1&libid=27&fileid=186169
Install it and your 700m will work with larger SD cards (but not SDHC).
By: herzigma on March 3, 2010
at 6:58 am