Gateway Notebook - Sound Device Unidentifiable

Model: Gateway NV52 Notebook Series

As many others have before me I eventually dropkick VISTA out of my laptop, wanting to swap to a less demanding operative system. I had some initial problems with failing XP installations and a working Ubuntu installation which I had to discard for other reasons.

So finally I get my XP installation to work, no problems at all. Except one.. The soundcard/driver does not work for me. My first thought was ofc to go to Gateways support site and pull the drivers from there, which sadly failed.

The Gateway's site suggestions is a :Audio_Conexant_v3.62.0.0_XPx86.zip - Conexant Audio Driver v3.62.0.0
Supports: Windows XP

The installation fails to complete due to not finding the soundcard.

I've read tons of different forum threads all over about different potential conflicts. I even wrote Gateway's support team, surprise surprise, they're useless..

A friend made a very wise comment but I have failed to execute it. Since alot of these companies, Gateway etc dont produce cards/drivers themselves but simply buy them and labels them to their own I should be able to somehow find out the actual hardware and from that get the drivers from another site with computers with the same hardware in it. Any thoughts on that?

If someone has had simular experiences and worked through it, please let me know.

Thanks Verre

 

I had the same prob on a Compaq desktop and a HP laptop when I went from Vista to Xp (pre vista Sp1)
What your mate said is correct in theory I have seen some cases were it worked and some it did not in my case it did not.
As a last resort for the desktop I installed an old SB live card I had to get around it.
On the laptop I put vista back on so I could use the original sound card.
However when I installed the RC windows 7 on them EVERYTHING worked perfect on it even with the original on-board sound.
Windows Update found every driver (the correct ones) with out me doing a thing.

I would try and get ahold of A Windows 7 RC ISO(7100) off the net or get the final Ver(7600) from your favorite computer store.
If I am not mistaken RC7100 is good till March 2010
And I must say that they are running way better with 7 on them than any other Windows OS so far I have tried.

 

I did try Belarc but Ill give Everest a try just to see if something different pops up.

Im not a 100% of this but as Ive experienced it programs like Belarc detect "Gateway products" as Gateway products despite the fact that all theyve done is simply put their label on it.

Itd be more helpful if Gateway could just fess up and give us the original hardspecs, but I suppose that aint happening.

So far everything Ive tried has led to nothing but Ill get back if anything changes with this.

 

Tried to fool around abit more with Everest and Belarc. Im getting the feeling that the reason why I cant find good chipset drivers is because Gateway dont have any chipset drivers for NV52 Notebooks along with XP, they all seem to be running VISTA.

The only thing that comes up with Belarc and Everest in terms of my motherboard is "Gateway SJV50PU". Which Ive yet to turn into anything useful.

 

i kicked windows out the door a long time ago so now i am all about linux

i wouldn't expect ubuntu to work on everything, it doesn't work at all on mine, but i use another distro of linux on it and it works beautifully and hasn't given me problems but my problems are usually the hardware not the os
i use pclinuxos and it has served me well, it works great on laptops too

 

Try (windows+r) and type dxdiag what comes up under System Manufacturer and Model and also look at Sound 1 and Sound 2 and see what info ou can extract from there.

Have you tried a Windows/Microsoft Update and see if they offer a "generic/legacy" Driver for you?

 

Regarding the Linux advice, the only problem I had with Ubuntu was that Im a gamer and I had a serious problem getting WoW to run with Wine. Aside from that I was incredibly impressed with Ubuntu.

I tried the dxdiag thing Bold Eagle suggested. Manufacturer and model gave nothing new, gave me Gateway and NV 52 Series. Under sound 1-2 Ive got nothing, says I have no soundcard and if I have one I should get drivers from the manufacturer.

I guess this sort of just makes the issue clearer. Gateway offers no sound drivers for XP for my model, hence my only option would be to figure out what "soundcard" is really in it, find another brand computer that have the same soundcard and get those drivers. Problem is that I have no idea how to go about getting info on what soundcard Gateway branded as their own and put into the laptop.

 

Another suggestion is to goto Device Manager and try and explore the "Sound Device" in there.

 

Tried the device manager, nothing but the most neutral information. Cant update any of them through automatic updates and no info is leading towards an other angle to resolve it.

 

I know this reply comes too late to help you, but it may help the next person attempting to figure this out that find's this thread. I was adding an XP boot to a guy's computer as a dual boot for old games and it is the NV52. I searched high and low and finally came up with the answer. I had to install an IDT audio driver which got the modem audio working. Only after that could I install the conexant driver from the Gateway site for XP. If you try the conexant first, it will not find the sound card. I did have to install both to get system audio. I think I got the IDT XP driver from HP's site as that what came up when searching for it. I used an unknown device identifier to determine what I was looking for. The conexant driver was from the Gateway site under laptop sound drivers, not under the NV52. It took me a few hours to get to the bottom of this and I hope this saves someone else that kind of time.