[guttadaj]

Howdy, folks.

I've tried looking through the posts here for something like this, but I couldn't find anything. Any help anybody can offer is hugely appreciated!!!

My problem is that my computer doesn't seem to fully recognize a soundcard. My comp came with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and it worked fine for a long time. Then, I just recently switched that out with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (I do some home recording as a hobby), and that worked fine for several months. Then, I have no idea what caused it, but things started acting screwy where sound was concerned.

I think there's something really screwed up, because when I go into Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices, it shows "No Audio Device" up at the top next to the speaker icon. When I go to the Audio tab, it shows "Modem #0 Line [Out/In]" selected in the Playback/Recording panels respectively. My Audiophile wasn't in the list at all. Also, I show no MIDI Devices where my Audiophile should show up since it has MIDI in/out. I tried disabling my modem (and actually pulling it), but then I have no selection options in any of those Audio dropdowns. I have tried uninstalling my Audiophile (software-level and physically) and reinstalling it, but I get the same thing with the modem selections back in my Audio playback/recording devices or nothing at all in those lists if I have the modem disabled. It's weird because, with the modem enabled, I can play music from Windows Media Player through my Audiophile outputs, even though the Control Panel shows this "Modem #0 Line Out" as the playback device. With the modem out, I can't play music at all - gives me error about no soundcard device.

I've checked for IRQ conflicts, and there are none - my soundcard shows up happily all by itself on IRQ 18. The M-Audio Audiophile driver shows up normally with no yellow exclamation mark or red X next to it. I have tried different PCI slots for the soundcard as well with no change. Also, I've tried putting the original Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card back in, and it has the same strange problem too, so it doesn't seem like it's the soundcard itself. I also tried installing the Audiophile in an old computer, and it worked fine there and showed up normally.

Any suggestions? Do you think it could be the OS? I think I've ruled out soundcard and slots... unless there's some flaw in my logic. What else could it be? I was going to try installing the OS on the other of my 2 drives and changing it to the boot drive to see if a fresh OS install recognizes it. Do you think that's a waste of time? Any other things I could try?

Thanks!
-Jeff

BTW, I've spoken with M-Audio tech support, and they had me try all the stuff I had already tried (I did it again, just in case I missed something), but they were just as baffled as I am with the results.

[Advertisements]

Could this possibly be a problem with the PCI bus? How would I check something like that? If that is the case, is that then strictly a hardware problem or is it something that could be screwed up in how the OS manages the bus?

Any thoughts or ideas appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jeff

[guttadaj]

Could this possibly be a problem with the PCI bus? How would I check something like that? If that is the case, is that then strictly a hardware problem or is it something that could be screwed up in how the OS manages the bus?

Any thoughts or ideas appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jeff

[admin]

I think my next step would be a repair installation of Windows:
http://www.geekstogo...p?showtopic=138

[guttadaj]

I think my next step would be a repair installation of Windows:

Thanks for the response, admin. I actually looked at trying this earlier, and I'm not sure if my CD (have a Dell so came with special Dell installation CD not regular Microsoft XP installation CD) has this 'repair' feature. I didn't see it when I last looked. I will follow the steps you spell out here though when I try again.

If that doesn't work, I think my next step will be to switch my system drive to be my new second hard drive (nothing to do with the problem - soundcard problem was a month or two earlier and 2nd drive installation went without a hitch) and install XP on it, maybe even just unplugging my original HD for this test, to see if that fresh install can recognize a soundcard ok.

Not sure when I can get to it, but I will post my results when I do. In the meantime, any other ideas, thoughts, or suggestions anyone else has... keep 'em comin'!

Thanks!
-Jeff

[guttadaj]

Well, after only a month and a half, I'm back up and running!!

I did try the repair - my CD did have that option after all. Thanks for those very detailed directions too! It didn't work for me though. I actually got an error after the CD repair ran and it rebooted and came back and was on the Installing Windows. I forget what it was exactly - should've written it down - but it was something like Error - Could not find access point for {some procedure or file or something}. I tried it a couple more times after that, and I didn't get that error anymore, but it gave me a Stop Error blue screen of death when it tried to get into Windows, so I bailed out and went to Plan B.

What I ended up doing was installing XP on a new hard drive that I got for Christmas. I was then able to install my Audiophile just fine, so I thought that it must have been a system driver (PCI bus driver or something) that got hosed somehow in my old O/S install. Well, then I happily went to M-Audio's site to download the latest driver, installed it, and holy crap!! same problem! Showed up as 'No Audio Device' in my 'Sounds and Audio Devices' control panel just like before. :mad: In the process of putting a fresh install of XP on my new drive, I took the opportunity to upgrade to SP2. Apparently SP2 is a bit more sophisticated when it comes to recognizing devices, because right after I updated to the recent driver, the system started saying that it detected an unrecognized device (M-Audio Multimedia Controller) and prompted me to install it. SP1 was content to leave things screwed up. Anyway, so I put the original CD in and installed the old drivers (not that old... from 07/2004) and now everything is at peace!

I will just leave it with the old drivers and send M-Audio tech support an email about this, but I just wanted to let everyone know what was going on. Thanks again for trying to help!!

Happy New Year to all!
-Jeff