L502X Card Reader unresponsive

I used my laptop's card reader for the first time in the few months I've had it yesterday to discover that it does nothing. I set folder options to show all drives in My Computer (even empty ones) and while my disc drive appeared, my sd card reader did not. I've installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled drivers from dell and Jmicron (the manufacturer) for l502x and l702x lord knows how many times, and still it defiantly does nothing when I plug in a card (despite device manager showing that the host controller is working fine and Microsoft fix it saying nothing was wrong save for my lack of about 100 random HP printer drivers). I also made sure the sd card isn't faulty by checking on a friend's computer.

So, what's the next course of action? Does anyone else have this problem or have a fix? Please don't tell me I have to fork over for a USB card reader or attempt the alleged gauntlet that is Dell Support.
Thanks in advance

 

I have this stupid problem sometimes too...usually rebooting the machine helps a little bit with me but I also think it's down to the make/model of the card as i've got some Sandisk SD cards that run beautifully on it without any problems.

 

Just updated the BIOS, tried a few more drivers, though no different cards, still no luck. I looked in disk management, and only my dvd drive shows up in removable storage. I also opened up the back and saw that the pins on the reader do connect, and that the connection to the MB looks perfectly fine. I don't know why device manager recognizes that a device is there (when I uninstall drivers and restart, it tells me about it and redownloads them), but in all other cases I cannot prove that I even have an SD card reader; basically outside of Device manager, I can't even get the thing to exist.
Has anybody had a similar problem, even not relating to the card reader (dvd drive, usb devices, or really any non-hardware issue that seemingly couldn't be solved by drivers)?

@Hamstar I've rebooted countless times to no avail.

Also, I don't think I have ever seen another drive in my computer besides the dvd drive, so I don't think card brand is the issue. I got the laptop refurb, and besides a keyboard that started sticking a bit a few months after purchase, there have been basically no problems with it.