Problem with corrupting SD memory cards

[shmokes]

I just bought a bunch of new cameras at work and 1 GB Sandisk Ultra II memory cards to go with them.  The cards are great -- extremely fast, but I'm having a serious problem.  I bought new memory card readers and they work fine with the cards, but any time I try to read the cards in older memory card readers, not only are they unable to read the cards, but they corrupt any data that is on the card and make the card unusable until they are reformatted.

Obviously this is awful.  One of the great things about SD cards is they are becoming so ubiquitous that more and more people have the capability of reading them.  So if you're at a friend or relative's house and take a great picture you can just pop your card into his/her card reader and give it to them.  But now I never know whether someone else's reader will destroy every picture on my memory card.  Is this normal?  I have tested it with multiple cards (though all the same make and model) and every single one of them have the same problem.  I've also tested them in two different older readers.  Both readers corrupt the cards.  The new readers I bought, however, work fine.  It would be fine with me if the older card readers were simply unable to read newer, larger, faster cards.  But what's up with corrupting all the data on the cards?  Is this normal?

It just occurred to me that I could probably flip the write protect switch any time I'm putting the card into a strange memory card reader, but I'd still like to understand if this is normal behavior. 

Anyone else have any experience with this?

[DrewKaree]

I have no clue if this is what is causing it or not, I just happened to be going through the "Services" menu in XP (dunno if your PC is XP or not that you're having problems with) and came across this.

In your "Services" menu, check the -Startup Type- of the -Smart Card- service.  It's supposed to enable support for older readers, so maybe that's causing a conflict which doesn't crash your PC, but causes data corruption.

Change it to -Automatic- and see if it happens, if that doesn't solve it, I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.