Update: ASUS has fully acknowledged the issues and has offered some support. Check out what ASUS has to say here.
Original article follows below…
I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad is that a recent update has caused the SD card reader on the ASUS ROG Ally to break. The good news? You can fix it yourself in a couple of minutes.
What’s going on exactly? It’s hard to say. It’s possible an ASUS or Windows update is the cause of the problem. Or both for that matter.
I don’t remember updating anything on my own ROG Ally, but I went to check my SD card earlier today and found that the drive is no longer accessible through Windows Explorer (the yellow folder icon). Normally with something like this I’d consider formatting the drive, but given how much data I’ve got on there I really didn’t want to do that unless I absolutely had to.
Thankfully, help is at hand.
How to Fix the ASUS ROG Ally Memory Card Reader
This fix was first spotted by u/georgioslambros on Reddit. And before you panic, yes, I’ve tested it out myself and can confirm it does work. A new update could render it useless, though, so be sure to keep the driver on your Ally just in case.
To kick things off first head over to the Intel website and around halfway down the page is a big blue download button. Click on that and it’ll download the Zip file we need.
Note: It will say the file is for Windows 10, but it works on Windows 11 as well.
Once the Zip is downloaded, head to your downloads folder in the Windows file explorer and use the right trigger on the Ally to click on the zip. Select extract then extract the Zip file to its own folder.
Keep going inside through the folders until you reach the screen above. See the file named “GIPciSD”? Use the right trigger to right-click on it and you should have an option labeled “Install.” Click on “install” and follow the on-screen instructions and the new driver will be installed.
Now just reboot the ASUS ROG Ally and when you load back up your SD card should be visible and accessible once again.
If only all ASUS ROG Ally problems could be fixed that easily!
