audio/usb not working

hey. i've had this wierd problem for a while. the audio and usb are not working on an ibm r51 laptop. i have also had an occasional blue screen of death on startup. when i run disc defragmenter, it always comes up with about 6-8% file fragmentation. it also always shows that it is safe to remove the D: DVD-RAM drive like i was trying to uninstall it. i have updated all of the drives off of ibm's website, including bios. i didn't do it in safe mode because i didn't know if that would matter. any ideas would be greatly appreciated. i am having a hard time getting anywhere with this. there are also no exclamation points on the device manager.

1.5 Mhz processor
512 MB RAM
Windows XP Pro OS
52 GB hard drive with about 18 GB of free space left

 

I know this is of no help: I was working on an HP laptop with almost the exact same problem. The USB ports were dead (but listed as healthy in the Device Manager) but I'd get pop-up balloons from Windows saying that there was a power surge in the USB ports. And the audio wouldn't work- even with a clean install of WinXP. The driver would install just fine, then request a reboot to finsh the install, and upon rebooting the audio would have a yellow '!' in the device manager. Nothing would fix it. I just found it interesting that you have similar problems. I ended up using a PCMCIA USB card and then putting a USB audio controller into that to get the sound working. The integrated audio controller was fried somehow; it was hardware and not a software problem.

hopperdave2000

 

has anyone else had anything similar? I want to make sure it is a hardware problem before i bring it in for repair. any ideas are greatly appreciated.

 

I would think you have a failing south bridge I/O chip or solder connection on the motherboard. This part of the chipset controls both the USB and Audio. Is the laptop still under guarantee or extended guarantee?

Studio T

 

yes its still under warranty until July. the warranty only covers hardware problems so thats why i wanted to make sure hardware was most likely the problem. if anyone has any other ideas let me know. thanks