Realtek audio not working - should i just buy different sound card?

I've been trying to resolve a sound issue with a Realtek ALC268 and KB888111. I've been all through this support forum (and others) and I have not yet found a fix for my system.

Then, it occured to me... why wouldn't I just want to buy a new sound card and be done with it?

Since my tech skill level is around the early intermediate level when it comes to the inner workings of a pc, I decided to post to see if my thinking is correct.

The conflict that I and hundreds of others who have posted here seems to have is with the Realtek on-board audio (built into the motherboard, is this correct?)
So tell me if I'm wrong here... why would I want to spend perhaps another 20 hours to resolve this issue if I can just spend $10-30 to buy a PCI sound device and install that?
My time and sanity are certainly worth far more than a few dollars.

The new PCI (non HD) device wouldn't have the conflict with the UAA Driver as long as I set BIOS audio to DISABLE.

Is this correct?

I'm just tired of messing with this and the audio quality is not very important as long as I can at least HEAR the audio.

Thanks for your help!

 

Can you please calrify exactly what is the problem? No sound at all or impaired quality? You may need to resolve this issue anyway because it may end up affecting any add on hardware!

What is your Motherboard and specific OS you are using?

Have you been to your Motherboard's website and DL and installed the Chipset Drivers and then the Audio Drivers?!?

 

Start from there and see if it can be resolved firstly.

 

The problem is that there is no sound at all. Nothing comes through the speakers. Also, there is no audio control or mixer.

This is a used computer with a fresh install if XP Pro using an original OS disk that I just purchased.
System: Gateway e-4000 desktop

Here is my device manager:


There is nothing listed in the Legacy Audio Drivers Properties tab.
In Add/Remove programs, I have KB888111 from the original install.
In another post, they suggested installing KB835231 as well. That worked for some. Not for me.

I am not very skilled at the inner workings of my pc, but I do ok. So please consider me somewhere around early intermediate. I have searched these forums for a solution. To help, I've already checked these items as suggested in other threads:

-I do not have any original driver disks (used computer)
-My BIOS audio is ENABLED.
-audio service is started

Up to now, I've tried a number of different drivers none of which worked:
WDM_A404
WDM_R170
WDM_R192
WDM_R196

I've tried installing these both with the unknown device enabled/installed as well as with it disabled/uninstalled.

I also tried an AC97 driver which was the only one that started the install process, but near the end, crashed the system and rebooted. It would never fully install.


Regarding your post:
Udpdating the chipset and audio drivers was one of the only things I haven't tried because I wasn't sure where to go. But I decided to run an Everest report and try to figure it out. I've attached the report below.

The report states that my motherboard is an Intel Rexburg D845GRG.
Searched the web and found the Intel Download Center for my board.

I downloaded:
1. Chipset: Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility for Intel® Desktop Boards (#12) - This installed fine.

2. Audio: AC 97 ADI (#7) - This won't install. I run the setup and get the error: "No driver found! Reboot your system and run setup again."

I find this to be curious because, isn't this the driver? So why would it say that there is no driver found???

Another interesting thing is that the pcidatabase.com suggests a chip number ALC268, but Everest says an AC97 device. Is this the same? Different? I don't know enough to know what's right here.

Thanks for your help!

 

Can someone please help me with this?

My thanks to Bold Eagle for the initial assist, but it's been a few days since I've heard a reply. I'm anxious to resolve this or just put in a new sound card if that would work.

Does anyone have a moment to help?

I'd appreciate it.

 

Here comes the cavlary

Could you please do your Windows updates and install SP3 and while you are there click on the hardware option (after all important updates) and see if they offer you anything for your motherboard, specifically Audio AC97 Codecs for the Audio Chipset Intel 82801DB ICH4, it is the Audio Adapter in your report and is inbuilt Audio coming from your Southbridge Chipset (probably a bit to much info....sry)!

Please goto this link and we can find all the appropiate drivers for your motherboard, from EVEREST we see that you have an Intel D845GRG with an XP Prof OS:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...+XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

Now from here please DL:
Motherboard Chipset Software (just do it again to humor me please) that is Driver No.7
The Video Driver (while where here may as well), Driver No.3 and finally the Audio Driver, i.e. Driver No.4.

We are going to install these in a specific order!

Please put all of those into a single folder and call it Intel Motherboard Drivers and later place it somewhere you can find it if you ever need it again.

Okay please open and install the Motherboard Drivers to start with, then please install the Audio Drivers and finally the Video Drivers, if it asks you to restart the PC after any driver please do and remeber which driver you had just installed then move onto the next.

Hopefully either of these options is going to resolve the problem. If not please get back and we will do some aggresive driver cleaning and start from scratch.

 

A note on HD Audio and SP3
The initial release of SP3 for WinXP did not support HD Audio/AAU.
According to a white paper released from MS on June 2nd, this has been rectified.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946480/en-us
It is important therefore to get the latest version of SP3 when dealing with HD Audio problems.

And to answer your question: Yes installing a different sound card will solve your problem, if the SP3 fix doesn't

 

UAA HD AUDIO DEVICE SUPPORT IN WINDOWS XP SP3
This is another MS nasty for all the deployment folks pushing XP SP3 to computers with UAA HD Audio devices. Yes SP3 will support the devices and the drivers are included however,, the patch IS NOT included! The update to KB835221, KB888111 doesn't link to the download but instructs you to call MS Support to get the patch which doesn't work on SP3.

This patch is required before any of the HD device drivers are installed
1. On your PC change the CSDVersion registry key to XP SP2:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\CSDVersion value=200
2. Restart your PC
3. Install KB888111xpsp2.exe http://couponmeister.com/blog/HD_Audio/kb888111xpsp2.exe
4. Change the CSDVersion key back to XP SP3 again:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\CSDVersion value=300
5. Restart your PC, finalize configuration of your PC, sysprep and capture.

 

So simple, yet so complicated...

HOLY CATS!!! It's working!!!

But it's not what you would think...
First of all... enormous thanks and eternal gratitude to BoldEagle, joelsz, and musksnipe for your assistance. Knowing you (and all the others) are here to help gives me the confidence to rip open a computer and fix what needs to be fixed, learning during the process.

THE SOLUTION (for my system):
I was just about to give up and just buy a new sound card today. (I've been working on this for 10 days!) And it just hit me...
LUCKILY, I had purchased two of these used Gateway e-4000 desktops, but the drives had been imaged and were all junked up, therefore, the clean install.
After days of trying to (unsucessfully) cram the audio driver listed on the intel motherboard driver site into this machine, it hit me... why not look up the driver version on the other machine with the working audio? And there it was... 5.12.1.3571, NOT the Soundmax Cadenza driver from the intel site (which only gave me the "driver not found!, reboot your system and run this setup again" error).

I googled 5.12.1.3571 and luckily found this post where someone had a problem installing this specific driver. Apparently there is an error in the auto install script which looks for the wrong folder so you have to manually navigate to the setup.exe file.
Anyway, the post pointed me to the emachines support site where I was able to download the driver. (On the emachines page just expand "download" and it is under "audio.")
Even though it was from the emachines site (and I'm using a Gateway), I figured, why not? I've got nothing to lose! AND IT WORKED!

*whew!*

Note: I had tried so may different things while trying to fix this issue that I decided to RE-reinstall XP Pro SP2 for a fresh start before trying to fix it one last time. I don't know if any of the other updates to SP3 or any other attempted fixes prior to the re-reinstall would have had any impact on this new driver install, but I just thought I'd mention this for documentation purposes.

This fix certainly may not apply to a vast majority who have this issue, but I figured I'd post the info in hopes that it may help someone.

So, once again, thank you to all of you for your time and assistance! I greatly appreciate it!

All the best!

 

Oh... and I DID update the chipset drivers (from the intel motherboard site - link above) before installing the 5.12.1.3571 driver..

Don't know if that had an impact on the install of the new driver, but thought it was worth mentioning.

 

That's good info, DIYGuy.

I have always told folks to extract the .zip files, then run the setups from the extracted one, but didn't know why.
I just repeated what I had read, that this was the right way. Now I know why it should be done that way.

Glad you solved your problem.

 

Yes it's always good when people post the solutions to their problems.
Far too often, once a problem is solved, the OP (Original Poster) never returns to let us know.
Thank you for taking the time to inform us.

:clap

 

Now take all those working drivers and burn them to a CD. If a driver gets "lost" again, you won't have to spend days searching for the correct driver. You put in the CD, place a copy of the driver you need on the desktop and install it.

 

Well done, it is great when you fix things, although it was the convoluted route there was an increase in the learning so all good.