how to disable sound?

Sorry about the nub question. I am a wannabe computer geek. =(

Im having crashing problems with my junk and its getting worse. My system is an Asus nv266 MB, athlon xp1700+, ti4200, whatever onboard sound came with the thing.

It has been crashing randomly during WoW. Now it only gives me a minute in the game before it shuts off.


Id like to completely disable sound to see if that is the problem. How do I do that?


thanks

 

You should be able to disable the audio in the device manager but thats not likley the problem even though it displays symptoms.

You would need to better define what "crashing" means. Doest the system bog down, reboot, lockup, shut off, etc.

A first guess would be that your processor is getting too hot. Make sure your processor cooler is clean and the fan is working.

With more info, I'm sure that someone here could help.

 

Do you know how to access your BIOS? I'm not sure on an Asus board, but re-boot your machine and during the boot process at the screen that shows your RAM amount, HDD, etc, press 'delete' a number of times. A blue screen should appear with various subject headers. Scroll down to 'integrated Periphials' and press enter. Scroll down again until you see something like 'onboard audio' or onboard sound' or something of that nature. It should read 'enabled.' Disable it, press esc, then F10, and a small box should appear, answer yes and let the machine re-boot. You should have no more sound.

 

Thanks for the replies!

I have PCprobe on this computer (thanks to this site!) and in game the processor sometimes reaches 45C but I have read that is not bad for and older athlon. I have a new heatsink/fan on the cpu cause the stock setup was getting to the high 50sC during games. I thought that may have been causing my crashing problems.


By crashing I mean during games the monitor would tunr off (go to standby) and the computer would reboot. Sometimes it would ask to send an error report to windows. I looked into it a couple times and the windows error thing claimed it was a driver error (sry I cant remember specifics) but they couldn't pinpoint the problem.


I have updated the sound (onboard) drivers from nvidia site and I went back to nvidia 45.33 driver for the video card. I am still having problems. I asked about disabling sound because during the game I feel that the sound, at least background sounds, are not being played properly. Like they may be skipping in and out? My wife plays the same game on a new hp media ctr laptop and I think she gets more and better sounds from the game.

My theory was the onboard sound was getting overloaded/overheated? and shutting down the computer. I was asking to shut the sound off so I could test this.


I logged onto here for help cause last night something worse started. When it shutdown it made a ticking noise from the case and instead of rebooting it just shut off the monitor and all the lights on the front of the case but it didnt reboot and all the fans in the case were still running. Now if I try to restart the computer the same thing wil happen. Monitor shuts off and lights go out but everything is still on inside the case and it will not start up without hitting reset.


Hmm that was a lot of typing =(
Ill try the BIOS thing and see what happens....

 

I updated my signature, hopefully shows correctly what is in this thing...


I could not find the words "integrated peripherals" or "onboard audio". Does anybody know what ASUS calls these things or how to navigate to them?


Matter of fact my brother told me something about turning off the onboard video when I added the ti4200 video card but I could never find anything on that one either. SO if that is true, onboard video might still be powered even tho the monitor is hooked up thru the vid card?

 

well, there are a few possiblilities. Your video card is crap, WoW is probably a huge stress on it, if you have an agp slot get at least a 5200fx, if you wanna play more that just WoW I would reccomend a 6 series card liek the 6600gt. Also be sure to update video drivers whether you get a new card or not. lastly, try deleting the WTF WDB and Interface folders in world of warcraft, tehse often get corrupted especially if you are using add0ns.

 

Heres the story on the vid card. Befroe WoW I was playing star wars battlefront and it would shut down after a couple hours of play (it would monitor off then reboot the computer). I found out that the fan on the vid card wasnt turning. I went and bought a big fancy heat pipes and fans and sinks setup for it and installed it. I thought it fixed it for a while but it started doing the same thing.

Thats when I put pcprobe on the computer and found the CPU was getting up close to 60C during playing. So i bought a big fan and sink setup for it too. Now CPU doesnt get over 45C. I thought that fixed it for a while but again, it would reboot the computer after a couple hours in the game.


Now it wont reboot, it just shuts things off. Even startmenu/reboot all it will do is shut off the monitor and power/HDD lights on the case. I have to press reset for it to boot back up.

Does this still sound like a video card issue?

 

Sounds like it could be a power supply issue, but then again, if the fan on you vid card stopped working the gpu is probably damaged, and liek i said, it is a very old card, my dad uses a 5200FX and it is crap compared to todays cards so that 4200 is obsolete, if you have a spare power supply try that first, if it doesn't work replace the video card.

 

I just got DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen after about 10 minutes in the game. Windows error reporting says its cause of an unknown or unsigned driver.

Im getting the hint about the vid card tho. My bro says to quit screwing around and upgrade. A new mobo/cpu, vid card and power supply. I wish I had some spare parts around so I could find out whats really going on before I just dump out and buy more stuff...

 

Im cornfused. Last 2 times I loaded 81.98 (latest from nVidia) drivers i had all kind of problem like games wouldnt start up, and crashes to desktop, etc .

After my last post I said screw it and loaded up 81.98 and I just now got off WoW after playing with no issues for almost 2 hours.

Its like driving a car thru the ghetto and never knowing when its gonna stall out. lol


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