[superstar]

Hello I hope you can understand the urgency of the issue I'm having with a sound card I purchased. I am in the music industry and I recently bought thousands of dollars in equipment. One of the main things I purchased was a "M Audiophile 192" sound card worth hundreds of dollars. You can see complete details about this sound card here:

http://www.m-audio.c...le192-main.html
[Official Manufacturer's Site]

Well the issue is quite plain and simple. As I mentioned I bought thousands of dollars worth in equipment and they all need to run off the sound card. So no working sound card means no working equipment. I bought the card last week and brought it home. I followed complete instructions for the card with the quick start guide it brings. The guide says "insert the driver cd, install drivers, shut down pc, install sound card into pci slot, turn on pc, finish the on screen driver installation upon reboot [no cd], done, restart pc one final time and it will be ready for use". I did exactly what it said and always got to the last step where you restart one last time. Every time I'd restart on the final step the pc would freeze at the win xp home edition sp2 logo screen or at the login screen. So it would not load up to the windows desktop, I would have to manually press the power button so my pc would shut off and try to boot up again. But the same thing kept happening. I know what your thinking... Oh the card wasn't in properly... Yes it was. I thought it was faulty so I took it back to the store and they ordered me a new one. I just got home today and tried to install the new one and the same thing is happening again. I had to literally pull out the pci card from the slot and boot up just to come here for help. So yes my pc works without the card inside. This cannot be two faulty cards in a row. What can I do? Please help. By the way I do not use the integrated sound from my motherboard as it is disabled in my bios, and I also had a "Creative Soundblaster Live" sound card in my pc before I bought this new one. The other sound card works and has no problems. Of course I uninstalled the software and stuff for the other sound card. & no I cannot stick to the "Creative Soundblaster Live" card because it doesn't have the outputs and inputs the new card has. Heck this new card is worth hundreds and I only have a couple of days to take it back. I need to get this working. I called the sound card company but their support is terrible and they can only help if the card is fully working in the pc. I have an "HP Vectra VL400" pc which is probably from 2001. Read my signature and you'll see everything I'm running on this pc. I've never had anything like this happen to me on this pc before with any pci device ever.

I WILL PAY ANYONE WHO HELPS ME SOLVE THIS ISSUE AND GET THIS SOUND CARD WORKING. MONEY ORDER, PAY PAL, OR CHECK. PLEASE HELP. I RELY ON THIS TO START UP MY BUSINESS. MY HOPES AND DREAMS ARE RIDING ON THIS VERY EQUIPMENT. PLEASE FOR YEARS I'VE WANTED TO BUY ALL THIS STUFF. AND THE SOUND CARD IS THE ONLY PIECE THAT CAN MAKE THE REST OF THE STUFF WORK SINCE EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO IT. PLEASE I'VE WORKED FOR 4 YEARS SAVING UP FOR ALL THIS STUFF, AND I'VE BEEN WISHING FOR THIS EQUIPMENT FOR EVEN LONGER. I BEG OF YOU PLEASE. I'M SORRY FOR THE BOTHER.

Edited by superstar, 08 May 2007 - 10:50 PM.

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I gotta admit I'm replying for the money! First of all, you're banking everything on... an old computer? I wonder if you are able to access someone else's computer (with same os, XP Home, preferably) and try and install it on there? Secondly, because it's a new card, you might need to update the BIOS and other drivers. It might be a conflict. If you are able to uninstall all programs/drivers associated with all sound devices, ensure the computer runs (with no audio), then try turning off the computer and installing the card, rebooting WITHOUT first using drivers cd, see if windows starts (it should come up with the "found new hardware wizard"). Also I've just found a reasonably up-to-date driver for the Audiophile 192 on their website <http://www.m-audio.c...7e8&o=15&f=785> are you using this driver?

[Troy]

I gotta admit I'm replying for the money! First of all, you're banking everything on... an old computer? I wonder if you are able to access someone else's computer (with same os, XP Home, preferably) and try and install it on there? Secondly, because it's a new card, you might need to update the BIOS and other drivers. It might be a conflict. If you are able to uninstall all programs/drivers associated with all sound devices, ensure the computer runs (with no audio), then try turning off the computer and installing the card, rebooting WITHOUT first using drivers cd, see if windows starts (it should come up with the "found new hardware wizard"). Also I've just found a reasonably up-to-date driver for the Audiophile 192 on their website <http://www.m-audio.c...7e8&o=15&f=785> are you using this driver?

[Neil Jones]

First thing I would do would be to boot the computer in a mode that it works with and then uninstall all old sound card drivers (including this one). This may include having to uninstall the sound from the onboard sound even though you no longer use it.

Next things to try first is to put the card in another PCI Slot. As you are running a socket 370 system, this isn't top of the range and is actually a few years old. You may have a duff PCI slot or the card is conflicting with something else in the system. Therefore try the other slots and also go into BIOS and turn off all the stuff you don't use to free up some resources. Also if you have another card in a PCI slot (for example a modem), swap it around with the one you had the sound card in and see if the system boots. Alternatively if you don't use the modem take it out altogether.

If you have access to another computer (a friend's computer for example) try your card in their computer. It is possible (but quite unlikely) that both cards were duff.

Failing this you may have a software issue with that Windows installation depending on how old it is.

Edited by Neil Jones, 09 May 2007 - 03:33 AM.

[superstar]

Thank you so much my friends but someone already gave me the idea to use that exact same new driver update you posted "ruthandtroy", so he beat you to it. It's funny because you both mentioned the exact same idea. Sorry about that. Well the sound card is now working. It did not freeze at the end of the installation. I haven't tested it with the equipment that you attach to it but judging from the fact that it hasn't frozen my windows at the xp boot logo or login, I believe it is okay and ready to use.

I restarted my pc several times to see if it would freeze and it hasn't as a matter of fact I'm on the pc right now writing you this while the card is in the system.

The sound card came with a driver cd and it said that it was intended for win xp sp2 only and win nt2000. Why did the new driver from that same link work while the one that came with the card didn't? By the way the card says it was manufactured in Jan 2007 so like I said before the drivers on the disc were older than the on that link. But I'm still trying to understand why I had issues, why it did that before, and why the updated driver on the site worked? I don't know much about drivers but this is weird. By the way before I installed the new drivers or even uninstalled the old ones windows xp popped up a message in the systray saying "there is new updates for your windows, update now". So I clicked the little bubble in the systray and It showed 3 updates. One update was for IE7, one for malware, and a last one which I found to be odd something that said "Third Party Driver Update". Yes that last one did sound odd huh? So I clicked on it to see the details and it said something along the lines of "This update will create reliability with third party drivers conflicting with ntfs file systems".... I installed all of the updates of course. But I don't know doesn't that just sound odd to you? Could that be what fixed this issue and not the new updated driver version from the m audio soundcard site?

Either way this new driver saved me from taking back thousands of dollars worth of equipment back to the store. I am sure everything else will be fine from here on. I am going to attach all of my equipment to the sound card right now and see if it all works. I bet it will now!!! As for that windows update that popped up... Hmm sounds weird but now I'm wondering if I ever format the hard drives on this pc will I ever have to look for that windows update since I can't be sure it'll just pop up again. Shessh what a troublesome day.

[Troy]

The windows update popup would have basically been giving you the same thing, the updated driver from m-audio. That's why it's called a "third party" driver update, because m-audio created the product that was classed third party. Anyway, you never said anything about mentioning stuff to friends so if you think you're getting out of paying me my money

Good to hear everything is working well. Yes it is a little odd, but that's why good companies bother with driver updates because errors happen that they haven't anticipated or been able to recreate in their studios prior to releasing the product. And that's why companies who have good working relationships with Microsoft are able to have their driver updates integrated into windows update.