I have a Sony TX 670 laptop which I bought last November.  I recently purchased some large 4GB Ridata SD cards.  Problem is that the laptop does not recognize this 4GB Ridata SD card, nor does it recognize a 4GB Dana Elec SD card.

However the laptop does recognize my smaller Sandisk 1GB and Sandisk 2GB SD cards.  Laptop also recognizes a cheap Canon 16MB SD card that came with a Canon digital camera.

Does the TX670 laptop not recognize anything above a 2GB SD card?  If so, is this normal?  Does it have to do with FAT 16 versus FAT 32 issues?

I really need for my laptop to recognize my 4GB cards, because I use this for file transfer with my Palm Treo 700p PDA cell phone (eg: Excel/Word files, pictures, PDFs, etc).

Should I send in my laptop to Sony repair?  :(

Thanks a lot, Casey

Have a look here:

http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10468

Thanks for the link!  I feel *slightly* better knowing this problem must exist for all Sony TX laptops, plus maybe other brands too.

In any case, I sent off my laptop to Sony Repair today asking for a fix on this.  Who knows, maybe they might have a firmware update to recognize 4GB size SD cards?  Worth a try.

By the way, I had spent nearly an hour with Sony’s technical support, and after trying to troubleshoot this problem, they finally authorized me to send in my laptop for repair on this issue.  Never once did the Sony tech rep say to me that the laptops cannot recognize a 4GB SD card.  I even told them I’m using a 4GB SD card too.  Oh well !!  :-((

I’ll try to remember to update my progress on this by posting to this board.

Thanks,
Casey

Well, a week later, I got back my laptop from Sony repair in San Diego.

Unfortunately, nothing was done to resolve the 4GB SD card problem.  A rep told me they inserted their own 64MB test card into the SD card slot, and it worked okay, therefore the card reader is fine.  Man, oh man, don’t these people read my detailed problem description on the worksheet? Duh!!

At least they didn’t erase my hard drive.  But on the downside, they forgot to send back my own 4GB SD card that I had enclosed for their testing!  Oh brother.  I called the repair center, and they are probably looking around for it as I’m writing this.  Fortunately, I had nothing important on the card, but still, it would have been nice for them to return back my stuff.  Oh well, I’ll just wait for their return call.

On a positive note, I had also complained about a noticeable dead pixel problem in the top left corner of the screen.  I asked them to fix this.  They went ahead and replaced the entire screen, and now my screen appears to be perfect!  I’m happy about the screen replacement, and I’m willing to forget about the SD card problem for now. 

I have to say that Sony does have a quick turnaround time.  The 2 times I sent in my laptop for repair, it came back 1 week later.

Now if you were to ask me whether I might buy another Sony laptop…hmmmmm, dunno.  I’m tempted to try out the Fujitsu offering to see if the other side of the fence is any greener.

Anyway, I’m just writing to give you guys an update.  I’m glad I have a 3 year extended warranty plan that came with my purchase!

Casey