[mobythevillan]

Greetings one and all. I think I've tried just about everything to fix this, but to no avail.

The problem occurred (I believe) just after some hard drive issues arose a while ago. My 14gig master drive suddenly became unbootable, so I bought a new Hitachi 250gig HD, re-installed XP Pro and updated with SP2. I then managed to recover a lot of what was on the old drive (Samsung) on to the new one, re-formatted the old drive (which now works OK, strangely) re-loaded WinXP Pro/SP2 on that and installed it as my master, with the 250gig as slave.

No amount of unstalling, re-booting, re-installing of sound drivers has had any effect: I still don't have any sound on my PC at all. All the obvious things, speaker connections, possible IRQ conflicts, enabling of the drivers, have been tried. The on board sound in BIOS (a Giga-Byte GA-7VT600 mobo alreadly flashed with the latest revision from their website) is enabled.

Just before I toss the box out of my window, can anyone here suggest another course of action, or is it best to junk it and get a new one?

I would really like to know why this has happened, if only to expand my knowledge of how these things work!

Many thanks....

Moby

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Hi, mobythevillain. Welcome to GeeksToGo!
The on-board sound-chip may have failed (not uncommon). This happened on my PC two years ago. I made that assumption based on the fact that it was enabled in the BIOS and Windows listed it in Device Manager with nothing to indicate a driver problem. So I bought a separate PCI soundcard, fitted it, disabled the on-board sound in the BIOS, booted into Windows and installed the drivers for the new sound card. Sound worked fine after that (and still does).

You don't have to buy a top-of-the-range soundcard that can feed a 7.1 surround-sound system unless you're into that sort of thing. Just a standard soundcard is all you need -- just make sure you have an empty PCI slot to put it in.

Edited by pip22, 09 December 2007 - 07:16 AM.

[pip22]

Hi, mobythevillain. Welcome to GeeksToGo!
The on-board sound-chip may have failed (not uncommon). This happened on my PC two years ago. I made that assumption based on the fact that it was enabled in the BIOS and Windows listed it in Device Manager with nothing to indicate a driver problem. So I bought a separate PCI soundcard, fitted it, disabled the on-board sound in the BIOS, booted into Windows and installed the drivers for the new sound card. Sound worked fine after that (and still does).

You don't have to buy a top-of-the-range soundcard that can feed a 7.1 surround-sound system unless you're into that sort of thing. Just a standard soundcard is all you need -- just make sure you have an empty PCI slot to put it in.

Edited by pip22, 09 December 2007 - 07:16 AM.

[mobythevillan]

Hi, mobythevillain. Welcome to GeeksToGo!

Cheers Pip, glad I found this site.

The on-board sound-chip may have failed (not uncommon). This happened on my PC two years ago. I made that assumption based on the fact that it was enabled in the BIOS and Windows listed it in Device Manager with nothing to indicate a driver problem. So I bought a separate PCI soundcard, fitted it, disabled the on-board sound in the BIOS, booted into Windows and installed the drivers for the new sound card. Sound worked fine after that (and still does).

That seems to fit with the symptoms I've got here. To all intents and purposes, Windows reports no problems with the sound. Makes tracking down a problem like this more difficult than it should be....

You don't have to buy a top-of-the-range soundcard that can feed a 7.1 surround-sound system unless you're into that sort of thing. Just a standard soundcard is all you need -- just make sure you have an empty PCI slot to put it in.

I'll give it a go and report back. Many thanks!

Moby

[mobythevillan]

Well, I am flummuxed! Got a cheap PCI sound card, slotted it in, and eventually, Windows recognises it not as a new sound, video and game controller, but as a PCI device in a branch of Device Manager headed Other Devices. Needless to say, it has a yellow question mark against it, but will the drivers install, will they [bleep] as like.....I seem to be just chasing my tail here!

Any other ideas before I put the thing on a ceremonial bonfire?

Moby

[mobythevillan]

Looks like my PC needed a night's rest and a clear out of the old sound drivers. Tonight, I came back to the machine and switched on. Uninstalled the old drivers and re-booted. Switch on and away goes Windows loading the drivers for the new hardware it had found, a PCI Controller or somesuch. Re-booted again, made sure the speakers were plugged into the correct socket and...BINGO!! Sound, beautiful sound....I am one chappy chappy!

My on-board sound chip must have bit the dust after all. Thanks for the advice Pip.

Moby

[rinconjoe]

well i was going to say most likly a sound card driver conflict make sure to uninstall old drivers reboot .

[mobythevillan]

Something I forgot to do first time around. Oh well, something else learned....

Cheers,

Moby