Member Avatar for Tjmahone

I installed a Synchrotech cardbus reader into a new PC today. It fits into a 3.5" drive bay and has a IDE cable that connects to the PCI slot on the back of the board. After installing it, the mouse driver disappeared and I had to reinstall the drivers. I shut it down, watched it go black, and a few seconds later I saw that was back on. I shut it down again, same thing. I watched it this time and after 7 seconds it goes back on. I don't see traces of BSOD but disabled auto restart to be sure. When I take the card out of the PCI slot, it doesn't reboot. The manufacturer doesn't have drivers on their website, they recommend using a Windows install disk to make it work. The drivers were installed by Windows and seem to be the right ones, most updated. I am at a loss. And to be sure that it wasn't isolated to this PC, I had to install a second one, does the SAME thing except that I didn't have to reinstall the mouse driver. I tried disabling the device, and uninstalling the device in Device Manager. I'm at a loss.

SPECS:
Intel DH67BL motherboard
Windows 7 Professional
Intel Pentium G630 CPU
Stock 350W PSU (remember, this is happening on 2, so I don't think the PSU is faulty)
WD 500GB Caviar Black HDD
4GB RAM

Please let me know if I can provide more details. I can't think of what else it could be. Thanks!!

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Dani AI

Generated

This looks like a firmware/power-management interaction rather than a Windows-only driver bug. Because the reader installs as a PCI/CardBus device it can generate a PCI power-management event (PME / WAKE#) that will power the board back on from S5; two identical PCs showing the same behavior makes a hardware/PME hypothesis plausible. (edc.intel.com)

Quick, repeatable diagnostic (run as Administrator in Windows):

powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
powercfg -lastwake
powercfg -waketimers
powercfg -devicedisablewake "Device Name"

Use those to see which devices Windows thinks can wake the system and to disable them while testing. See Microsoft’s powercfg documentation for details. (learn.microsoft.com)

Practical steps that usually fix this class of problem:

  • In Device Manager, open the card’s entry (and the network adapters / USB root hubs), Power Management tab → uncheck “Allow this device to wake the computer.” Then test shutdown. (If the card itself has no Power Management tab, BIOS-level control is required.) (learn.microsoft.com)
  • Enter the motherboard BIOS/UEFI and disable PME-related and Wake-on settings: look for options named “PME Event Wake up”, “Power On by PCI/PCI‑E”, “Wake on LAN” or EuP/ErP and turn them off while testing. Different boards expose these under Power/APM settings. (manualzilla.com)
  • Update the motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers — power-management bugs are sometimes fixed in firmware updates. If you don’t see relevant BIOS options or updates don’t help, the card is likely asserting PME on shutdown and should be returned/replaced. (community.intel.com)

Because already tried two readers and removing the card stops the reboot, the most practical path is: try the powercfg/Device Manager changes first, toggle PME/WoL/ErP in BIOS, update BIOS, and if the card still forces a restart, request an RMA or use a different internal-reader model. Additional reading on PCI/WoL wake behavior is available from Intel and vendor KBs. (intel.com)

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Member Avatar for caperjack

if that is same model as yours ,its not supported by win7

Member Avatar for Tjmahone

This model is the PCM-CR-PC1IF32R-B, the instructions say to get drivers from an XP/Vista/7 disk. Any other suggestions? I am on the same page as caperjack, I don't think it's supported.

Edited by Tjmahone
Member Avatar for Tjmahone

I downloaded Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, and it says it's compatible with Windows 7 - it shows up in Device Manager as Ricoh R/RL/5c476(II) or Compatible CardBus controller. The Synchrotech site advises to "use drivers found on a (Windows) installation disc...the ..F32R uses the Ricoh R5C843 and the ...F32-B uses the Texas Instruments PCI1520 drivers supplied with Windows XP/Vista/7. There is nothing about the ...F32R-B, so I don't know if I'm using the right drivers or what driver it's supposed to use. This is annoying. I can only imagine calling Synchrotech for technical support is gonna be a nightmare, their website is shoddy enough.

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