I have an Acer Aspire 7720G-813G32Bn laptop. It has integrated (maybe 3?)-in-one memory card reader. The reader uses Ricoh chip from R5C8 series. I don't know the exact model number. I can't see the chip itself because it's covered by plastic and is very difficult to remove.
My problem are drivers. Acer has some drivers (unfortunately, driver I used, the "CarReader_Ricoh_352.02_Vistax64" is unavailable at this time, but there is still 351 version) for Vista SP1 64 bit. So far I've used those. However since the last reinstall of Windows, when I install those drivers, nothing happens. Normally, Windows would detect a bunch of unknown devices and the SD card reader. Once I install drivers from Acer, those unknown devices turn into various card readers.
Now, however, Windows only detected SD card reader and installed the SDA Standard Compliant Host Controller. The card reader would work sporadically with that driver. After some time it stopped working altogether. At first I thought it was a hardware problem and thought is was unsolvable. Later I was trying to force the installation of Acer's drivers but when I select the .inf files, I get the "The folder you selected doesn't contain a compatible driver blah blah blah make sure driver is for win64 blah blah" error. When I try to right-lick install the .inf files, I get the "The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation" error. It worked several months ago, but doesn't now.
While looking among available drivers in windows, I found Ricoh Secure Digital host controller R5C841 driver which I installed. Now SD card reader seems to work, but won't read SDHC cards.
Any ideas what to do to solve this problem?
EDIT1 I just downloaded some drivers from Microsoft(warinig: IE-only link!). With them too, I get the "The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation." error. This is strange since those drivers are from M$'s official driver website.
EDIT2
Here are the screenshots:
The unknown device is CIR receiver which I do not use and which has problematic driver
Best Answer
I have managed to find a newer device driver than the one from Microsoft, which also supposedly supports 64-bit:
Asus N51Vg Notebook RICOH R5C8xx Card Reader Driver 3.57.01 (Vista)
Another and somewhat older driver is here :
Asus X58L Notebook RICOH R5C843 Card Reader Driver
However, for obvious reasons, I cannot test them.