This laptop (Sony Vaio VGN-Z31MN/B PCG-6z2m) has been installed with Windows 7 64 bit, all the drivers from Sony's VAIO site are installed, and everything in Device Manager both (a) has a driver and (b) shows as working, no exclamation marks or warnings.
"Hide empty drives" in Folder options is disabled so the card reader appears, but will not read the card ("please insert a disk in drive O:").
Previously, when the laptop had Windows XP on it, it could read the same card.
Also, Windows update suggested driver ("SD Card Reader") doesn't work, Ricoh own drivers install properly but do the same behaviour. Other 3rd party driver suggestions from forums (Acer and Texas-Instruments FlashMedia) do not seem to install properly.
I would post the PCI id if I had it, but it was just showing up as rimsptsk\diskricohmemorystickstorage (while it had the Ricoh Driver installed).
Edit: If there are any lower level diagnostic utlities which might shed more light on it I'd welcome hearing of them. Anything which might show get it to put troubleshooting logs in the event log or identify chipsets or whatever...
Update: Device details are:
SD\VID_03&OID_5344&PID_SD04G&REV_8.0\5&4617BC3&0&0 : SD Memory Card
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2934&SUBSYS_9025104D&REV_03\3&21436425&0&E8: Intel(R) ICH9 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2934
PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0476&SUBSYS_9025104D&REV_BA\4&1BD7BFCD&0&20F0: Ricoh R/RL/5C476(II) or Compatible CardBus Controller
RIMSPTSK\DISK&VEN_RICOH&PROD_MEMORYSTICKSTORAGE&REV_1.00\MS0001: SD Storage Card
PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0592&SUBSYS_9025104D&REV_11\4&1BD7BFCD&0&24F0: Ricoh Memory Stick Host Controller
WPDBUSENUMROOT\UMB\2&37C186B&1&STORAGE#VOLUME#_??_RIMSPTSK#DISK&VEN_RICOH&PROD_MEMORYSTICKSTORAGE&REV_1.00#MS0001#: O:\
STORAGE\VOLUME\{C82A81B8-5A4F-11E0-AACC-806E6F6E6963}#0000000000100000: Generic volume
PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0822&SUBSYS_9025104D&REV_21\4&1BD7BFCD&0&22F0: SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
ROOT\LEGACY_FVEVOL\0000 : Bitlocker Drive Encryption Filter Driver
PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0832&SUBSYS_9025104D&REV_04\4&1BD7BFCD&0&21F0: Ricoh 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller
Now going to search for drivers for that.