Sound card issue

Help! I am stumped.

System:
Dell 8300 dimension, P4 3.0ghz, Windows XP SP2, 2G RAM, Nvidia 7800GS

Problem:
I thought my sound card died (SB Live!). Mic does not work. I do get sound though, but it is kinda wonky. Like I get general sounds and game sounds, but with video in Firefox = no sound. Trying to run MusicMatch Jukebox or Ventrilo causes them to crash or just not work (no mixer device available). When I try to use the sound control mixer it tells me there are no devices installed (or something along those lines). When I go to hardware manager it shows the sound card and says it is working properly.

If I go to Control Panel > Sound and Audio Devices
Under Volume: it says No Audio Device
Under Audio and Voice: the only device listed in the drop lists is "Modem #1"
BUT
when I go to hardware and properties of the sound card it says "this device is working properly.

I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled. No change.
I uninstalled the card, pulled it, reseated it, reinstalled the drivers. No change.
I pulled the card, removed the driver, put in a different sound card (Turlte Beach Riveria) and installed new card's drivers. No change.
I did a system restore to a point before I noticed any of these issues. No change.

I checked the BIOS and onboard sound is OFF.

Much appreciation for any help you can provide.

 

Meh... thought I had ti fixed after uninstalling and reinstalling SB Live! card it finally showed up as the audio device in Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices, BUT after reboot No Audio Device is what I get now.
:cry

 

How does audio work if you pull the SBLive and use the integrated audio instead? The driver for it is available on the Dell support website (http://ftp.dell.com/audio/R58182.EXE). Don't forget to move the cables.

If that works fine then its the SB card. If the integrated audio has the problem as well then I think it might be something with Windows itself. Testing the SB card in a known good system is another good test.

Let me know how this works ...


Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

 

OK This is a little weird. I replied this was resolved and what steps I took. There was even a response from a moderator that was how resolved posts should be handled. Here's what I previously posted and is now mysteriously missing:

Problem resolved-

Here is what I did:

• uninstall SB! Live sound card
• turned on the onboard card and installed drivers
• checked that sound, mic, etc. were working properly
• uninstalled onboard sound, turned off in BIOS
• reinstalled SAB Live card and drivers

So far so good.

 

I think I had eliminated the potential it was a card when I put in a different functioning card and the results were the same. Anyway, per my above post issue seems to be resolved.

 

Yeah, I didn't really think it was the card. However, I've seen multiple errors confuse issues before, and trying your card in another computer would verify the card itself worked.

I'm glad to hear you got things working again. If you had any other questions on the computer I'll be happy to help out.


Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

 

Well, it reverted back to same situation. As of now I am running integrated sound.

 

OK- same issue (see above) is now happening with the integrated sound as well. I install the drivers and everything seems fine. Then something goes wrong and the card doesn't not function properly. In computer > hardware > sound > properties it says the device is working properly, BUT if I go to control panel > sounds and audio devices it says "no audio device" and I have no option on the various drop down boxes other them modem #1. So, problem is not solved. Any help?

 

Check the event log (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer) to see if there are any log entries for problems at about the time the audio stops working. Be sure to check at least the Application and System logs (the Security log might have something useful, but considering the problem I doubt it). You can get additional information about specific event log entries on http://eventid.net/ or the Microsoft knowledgebase.

Another long shot, but one that can't hurt to try, would be to reinstall the Dell Desktop System and Intel chipset software. These two (installed in that order) basically are the motherboard drivers, so reloading them might fix the problem. Both are available on the support site (URL in my previous post).

Have you tried running the Dell diagnostics on the motherboard yet?

Does there appear to be any particular thing that causes the audio to fail (running a particular program/process, etc)?


Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

 

It's been several days and my integrated sound has worked properly.

It appears there was a conflict with something although I can not say exactly what. Since the sound would seem to function properly after install and reboot, then fail after running other apps (not any one in particular) I figured it had to be a conflict of some sort. Unfortunately, I can not tell you exactly what, but here is what I did and things seem to be running properly since then.

• Ran Crap Cleaner to make sure all the various junk was removed
• Ran the Issues checker in Crap Cleaner, twice
• Checked Startup and removed anything that didn't need to run. I recall removing mixer.exe which is a Creative SB program and I was running integrated sound.
• Uninstalled sound and reinstalled.
• Rebooted.
• Everything has functioned properly since. In fact I got sound out of my browser for the first time since this issue began. Ran Ventrilo and it worked for the 1st time. Ran BF2 and used VOIP no problem.

So for what it is worth I believe it was a conflict with something that was running on start up and not a driver issue.

 

I would have to agree with you that it was a conflict of some kind. My guess is that either mixer.exe was getting called by something and confusing the system, or the registry settings were fixed by the reinstall you did (or both).

Either way, I'm glad to hear it is working again.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate