Sound Problems

I have had this problem for more than two years. It appeared after automatically updating the Windows. The guys at Redmond (or is it Bollimond these days?) have done something wrong in their software that messes with the audio driver. My MB is an Asus with an Pentium. Any message at the boot up (like "system failed due to overclocking" etc..) is heard clearly, so the audio card is OK. When Windows takes control, the sound is chopped, and if I insist on listening, it fades into nothingness (nice, poetic).

I wonder if a Class A would be effective (besides making the lawyers richer).

You can probably resolve this issue by installing the chipset driver for the motherboard

I had this problem when running XP. Not being all that interested in listening to tinny reporductions on the computer anyway, I did not give it much thought. Funny- when I switched to Ubuntu, sound started working on first boot. No special drivers. No special setup. I had thought the sound had died on the computer or something. (It should be obvious from my attitude that I am using motherboard sound capabilities, not a special sound card) Now, it just works. I still don't much care for listening to tinny reproductions on the computer...Yes, there is something fishy about the way MS does things...To check your sound card, download a LiveCD *.iso image of Ubuntu (any flavor, actually) and test the sound from the LiveCD. No need to install, unless you want to. If you like it, you can install as a dual-boot setup, so you don't lose your Windows stuff...

you might have to update the BIOS. They call this 'flashing the BIOS'. Look at the BIOS codes as you power up and look at the makers website and see if they have an updated BIOS and flashing software.

Then you will also see the various bits and pieces of chipset software on the same site. You may need to reeinstall all of these after you flash the BIOS. I would reinstall them.

I have tried to install the BIOS but on all the ones I tried to install, it said not right for the motherboard. I got them off the AOPEN website, same motherboard and model, and I tried installing v1.03 all the way up to 1.10. It is running 1.02 at the moment. I also tried to get chipset drivers off the manufacturer's website, but there weren't any.

look and see what the detailed motherboard number stencilled on the moherboard is.

Then search that number on google to see comments by others with that mobo.

Usually the board makers have the latest downloads of drivers. The chipset makers make a standard chipset that is installed on various mobos with various drivers/bios addresses, which the chipset maker wants nohing to do with because he cannot maintain and support them, he does not know the details.

AOPEN is the place to go.

http://download.aopen.com.tw/Default.aspx

It is an AOPEN MX46-533V. I tried downloading all the drivers from there.

beats me, it seems to be a very old design, The first mention is in the year 2000, so it might have overheating issues with the CPU. The efficiency of the CPU heat sink and fan decline with time.

The cure for this involves remving the CPU heat sink, cleaning, removing dust, fluff etc, and replacing with a new layer of conductive grease.

That said, old boards can have gradual chip set failure, again from over heating of the chip set. The audio portion of the chipset makes the most heat = early failure

replacing the mobo = new memory, new CPU and new power supply. You can buy cheaper used boxes from 2005.

Another path is a USB sound card.

here is one, other make them

http://www.techspot.com/review/151-creative-xfi-go-usb/

Before going through all this effort and spending all this money, return to my Post #3 about the easiest way to determine if this is a hardware problem or a software (i.e., driver) problem. Download one of the Linux distro LiveCD *.iso files, run it from the CD drive without installing, and test the sound this way. The LiveCD instance will detect the hardware, and load the appropriate drivers. If the sound works with Linux, then there is no hardware problem, and it is a driver problem. MS can then direct you to the appropriate drivers, from the help menu (or, they used to, back in the days when I still used Windows...of course, you are running XP, and MS supposedly no longer offers support for XP, so you may have to Google for the appropriate sound drivers).

Test the sound system first, with an operating system that works out of the box, before trying to fix a problem you have not isolated properly...

My duaghter's PC had this same problem a couple of years ago. I first did all the HD maintenance (disk clean and defrag), then re-installed audio drivers, but this did not solve the problem. Then I bought a new hard drive, re-installed windows, and everything worked great!

I recently had this problem after installing Service Pack 3 into XP. My technician rolled me back to SP2, curing the problem immediately with no hardware-level intervention. I have therefore de-selected SP3 in Updates to avoid a recurrence.

I've run into several situations where audio chipsets from other companies (VIA most often) were misidentified by Windows XP as Realtek chipsets. Windows Update attempts to download a realtek driver and the audio stops working.

Do as a previous poster said and try running one of the UNBUNTU LINUX live CD distributions to see if the audio subsystem works using the built in driver. If it does, you have determined that the problem is software, not hardware. Then if you still have the original driver disk that came with the motherboard, try uninstalling the audio chipset using Device manager and if it asks to delete the driver let it. then upon reboot it will "discover" the audio chipset again and when it does, you should force XP to use the driver from the CD instead of allowing it to "search for the best driver" which is often NOT the best driver.

Once you get it working using the original driver, you should look in device manager and record the brand and model of the audio chipset it says it is. There are only three or four major suppliers for Audio chipsets. once you determine what make and model of chipset the board has, you can do a google search for the driver. Since there are so many boards out there that use the same drivers, you should be able to find a manufacturer that has updated drivers on their website.

If you don't have the original disk you need to do a bit more detective work. you'll need to examine the board and try to determine the brand and model of the audio chipset by looking at the chips on the MB and writing down the model numbers and google searching each one to determine which is the lan chip/audio chip/ etc. Realtek's logo looks like a pixelated crab with it's pinchers up in the air. if you can't find a chip with that logo on it, you don't have a realtek chipset.

GA for that :D The chipset is a SIS 962L, for which I have downloaded the driver and it still doesn't work. I have a Ubuntu CD, which works when XP is booted up, but the pc will not boot from it... Weird. Anyways, I think if I can't get ubuntu to boot, I will buy one of those USB sound cards, see if that makes a difference.

If you decide to use a separate audio card, either a PCI or a USB card for your audio, make sure and go into the bios setup and disable the onboard audio chipset, otherwise the onboard one will interfere with the new one.

When I has failed sound system problem—Gateway, XP—I also went off on all kinds of tangents including pricing new sound card. Finally and with a little fault elimination help from the Mfr site, I wound up simply using the installation/recovery discs (per guidance from the Gateway site) in order to easily detect and reinstall missing/corrupted files. Sound system was restored to full functionality (including some things I didn't realize were supposed to be there)...time spent: maybe 20 - 30 minutes...but that's a non-power user.

Check your audio settings. If "digital only" is checked you wil not get sound. I've seen this several times. Also the mute button