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Sound Card Hell

qurckqurck Member Posts: 91
in Off-Topic Discussion

Hi all.

i am having problems with my sound card, it is a VIA Tecnologies AC97 and im on windows XP (with no sevice packs) . the device manager says that this divice is working but i cant get any sound out of it! i have tried reinstalling the drivers but to no avail...
does anyone know the problem or more presicely the cure?

Cheers

We call the village idiot Mr. President

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Comments

  • KiamdeKiamde Member CommonPosts: 5,820

    Did you make the setting corrospond to your card in the volume menu?

    "Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"

    "When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman

  • Smelly_ArmorSmelly_Armor Member UncommonPosts: 571
    What is the motherboard you have? AC97 is referring to onboard sound and not a sound card. You may need to update your board's bios or find and install the latest sound drivers if you haven't already done that.

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  • dsorrentdsorrent Member CommonPosts: 1,627

    Someone correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the VIA chipset utilize those 4-in-1 drivers? I thought one of the 4 was something to do with the on board audio. Perhaps you need to install that?


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  • JohnarkJohnark Member Posts: 901

    Yeah those intergrated sound cards are a real pain in the ass!  The only thing you can do is go on the official webpage of your Motherboard and download the latest drivers from their webpage.  Unfortunatly there are no universal drivers for those video cards... even if google does show some, they are not.  they are drivers for other motherboards with the same soundcard chip, but won't work for yours if it ain't the same.

    Sadly enough, the only way I managed to fix my friend's HP Computer with that crap AC'97 soundcard even after downloading the official drivers off the HP webpage, we still never got any sound.  We did a full restoration (Format) and everything was back to normal.

    That proves it had conflict with something.  Unless you're a programmer or know how to debug WinXP, it's impossible to fix to find out what it's having conflicts with.

    Or heck, if you really don't wanna format, buy a cheap SoundBlaster Live (They are less than 50$ now), disable your AC'97 in the bios and you will never have any problems ever again.  Plus it will improve the sound when you play games.  No just quality-wise, but when you have the background music and over 64 soundFX playing all at once, all those sounds will play, instead of just 32 sounds at once.  And it'll free up some processor speed too since the AC'97 does take 5% of your processor.  Any non-intergrated soundcard does not take processor speed since it has it's own processor.

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  • qurckqurck Member Posts: 91

    i tryed all that and it is still buggard up! im going to ebay and get some deacent sound!

     

    We call the village idiot Mr. President

    image

  • KiamdeKiamde Member CommonPosts: 5,820

    Well sorry to say this but it is not your sound card that is bugging, it is you. Those things don't just break down without warning.

    "Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"

    "When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman

  • sidebustersidebuster Member UncommonPosts: 1,712


    Originally posted by Kiamde

    Well sorry to say this but it is not your sound card that is bugging, it is you. Those things don't just break down without warning.

    The hell they dont. It could be bad circuitry on his board, or it is conflicting with IRQs like said above. I hate when people say a computer doesnt mess up, it is the person that uses it. Well i guess those people never ran into bugs before.
  • KiamdeKiamde Member CommonPosts: 5,820

    Originally posted by sidebuster
    Originally posted by Kiamde
    Well sorry to say this but it is not your sound card that is bugging, it is you. Those things don't just break down without warning.The hell they dont. It could be bad circuitry on his board, or it is conflicting with IRQs like said above. I hate when people say a computer doesnt mess up, it is the person that uses it. Well i guess those people never ran into bugs before.


    If it was not broken, why did he not get it replaced. He should have the serial number. really, those boards don't just come out just broken.

    "Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"

    "When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman

  • KatheryneKatheryne Member Posts: 130

    I had this problem once on my older Compaq laptop.  Just because the sound circuitry is embedded in a VIA chip doesn't necessarily mean it uses VIA audio drivers.  You need to find out the specific manufacturer for your sound chip and get those drivers.

    One thing you could do is use the device manager to remove all the audio hardware, reboot, and allow Windows to re-detect the hardware.  The most popular audio hardware used with VIA chips are Realtek and C-Media.

    If possible, could you post which VIA southbridge chip you have?

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