Lowrance Card Reader Not Working with XP

[Rob Schaffer]

I recently purchased a Lowrance Airmap 500 and it came with all the stuff and CD's. I have installed the drivers for the MMC reader, but Window's cannot determine what it is.

The MMC card reader is a standard USB connector, but not a USB 2.0 reader. My ports are all USB 2.0. By going to the Lowrance Website, XP should automatically detect the "new hardware" and have the appropriate drivers. This doesn't work, as when I connect the reader to the USB port it indicates "Uknown Hardware Connected" and when I look at the reason by clicking on the bubble that pops up in the bottom of the screen, it say's No Device Drivers Found. I installed the drivers for the standard Reader, not the 2.0 reader, and rebooted my computer. Tried again, but same error message.

I've tried to locate the driver since I know I have it installed, but that doesn't seem to recognize either. Any Ideas? Should I try to download and install the 2.0 driver even though the reader is not USB 2.0? They say specifically on their website to look at the reader to download the appropriate driver.

If it doesn't work, no big deal, I can still save my data files to the MMC card and plug into my built in reader to get my trails and waypoints, but to update maps I'll have to order the card by mail instead of using the reader. I need to have these updated, since they are from 2003.

 

[GMascelli]

Hmmm...I thought the map create CD had what your looking for. I'll have to dig it out. If it is, I have it and you can use it.

I update through the mail, they send a SASE for the old chip in order to return for a credit.

 

[30703]

The driver for the Lei MMC card reader should be on the map create CD. If you can not locate the CD, you can download the MMC-USB 1.1 driver here

http://tinyurl.com/5n757c

For whatever reason, the lowrance driver download page does not show any download button

http://www.lowrance.com/en/Downloads/Drivers-and-Firmware/MMCI-USB-11-Drivers-LEI/

It is important to install the driver first before plugging in the MMC card reader. I made the mistake of plugging in the card to my laptop which recognized the card reader and installed a window driver. The reader can read and write MMC and SD cards fine but I could not update the Jeppesen database. Once I unplugged the card and installed the Lei driver first, it worked fine.

HPL

 

[Rob Schaffer]

I tried the mapCreate 6 CD to install,.. didn't find it still, then I tried the download from the website since I thought it could be a newer update,... still no luck.

Seems like I'm mailing for the update.....

 

[30703]

Rob,
This is a common problem with Windows especially with laptop. The USB 1.1 devices should work just fine with usb 2.0 port, but sometimes there is a usb driver stacking problem with the older devices especially the ones requiring drivers other than what supplied by windows.
There are several solutions to the problems. I'd suggest starting with the simplest one first
1. Shutdown the system, unplug the main power cord (if it is a laptop, remove the battery). Wait 30 minutes or so, plug everything back in except the balky usb device, restart the system. Now install the specific driver for the usb device which you had problem before plugging the device in the system.
If this solution does not work, try the next one (which worked for me when I had problem with an old USB hub with keyboard/mouse/parallel/serial adapter ports not being recognized by windows XP)
2. Unplug the usb device which you have problem with, go to device manager, find everything related to usb and uninstall them (except the usb mouse if it is in use). Shutdown the system. Before turning it back on, make sure that all usb devices except the essential ones (mouse, keyboard) were unplugged. Restart the system, install the usb driver for the device that you have problem with before plugging it in. Make sure that it is recognized by windows and works fine before plugging the rest of usb devices to the system.
3. Edit the registry. This is a lengthly process so I will not post the procedure here unless the previous two solutions do not work and you are willing to give this a try.

HPL