Insanely annoying sound card pbm

Thought I'd learned a few tricks, but problems like this pop up periodically to remind me otherwise.

Specs: Win 2kpro
Abit NF7-S
WD 37gb raptor (system disk)
Seagate 250gb (storage)
Radeon 9800 pro (Cat 5.10 and Cat 5.11)
768mb kingston hyper-x pc2700
3000+ athlonxp (socket a)
Linksys gigabit network adapter (pci, model EG1032)
Attempts at sound: Creative soundblaster live 5.1, Some old Yamaha
windows had the drivers for, and the onboard nforce2 option

I tried so many things, and more chaotically as time went on, that it is difficult to describe, but here goes:

I decided it was time for a reformat. Went about things as usual, format the raptor NTFS, install 2k pro. First thing, sp4 and all criticals, plus dx 9.0c which my mobo driver disk claimed was needed. First format (there were 2) I tried the Abit driver disk, second time I used the 4.27 drivers from Nvidia's website. I installed all drivers, including sound, same as I had done before, though I planned to disable the onboard sound in bios.

Here was the problem. After the post mobo driver restart, my "multimedia audio controller" was not recognized. I attempted to reinstall just the audio drivers and the result was the same. Got a desktop, windows tries to find the drivers, then give me the following: "An error occurred during the installation of the device. The data is invalid".

The first time, I figured the hell with it, I'll just install the soundblaster. Reboot, disable onboard audio in bios, get a desktop, install liveunipack (creative's recommended driver), reboot. Exactly the same shite. Windows finds an audio controller without drivers. Try to reinstall them, get the "An error...." mesage (code 28). Use the driver cleaner recommended here (something 2 pro?) as indicated by the text file, and retry. Same result. Wipe it all clean and try an old yamaha card I have. Same result.

The second format, I did the same stuff, except skipped install of nforce sound drivers, disabled in bios and tried the creative and yamaha with the same results.

Now I've Googled the hell out of this problem. I've found some similar problems, but they mostly seem to involve an upgrade to win xp. I've tried every registry hack and registry cleanup that I could find. Always the same result. I've put 6-8 hours into this seemingly basic problem and am near to bloodying my head on my beautiful new Saitek keyboard. I thought that after building a fair number of systems, this kind of thing just didn't happen anymore. If you can help me diagnose and solve this problem, I'll remember you in my will. Ask if there is any information I forgot to include. Thanks.

 

is there a jumper on the motherboard to turn off onboard audio also? prob not cause it's in the bios, but maybe.


also, which service pack do you have for win 2k?

 

No audio jumper. The first thing I did after installing NIC drivers was sp4, all criticals, and dx 9.0c.

 

sorry, i guess i should have read the WHOLE post.

 

on your first attempt, did the onboard work? or did you disable it before installing win?

 

No, never got it to work at all. It was enabled in bios and was the first thing I tried before either of the sound cards went in.