It's all gone very quiet

[Groundgripper]

In an attempt to sort out the involuntary shut-down problems on my computer, a couple of weeks ago I took the machine back to the shop that fitted the new power supply about eighteen months ago. They had a rummage around, re-fitting all the cards and memory but could find nothing wrong (again).
I now cannot get any sound at all. According to Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices "no audio device is fitted" which is odd as it has been there for the last few years:bored: . Delving further under Hardware in this window everything seems to be OK except for the C-Media AC97 Audio device which cannot start. The actual message is:
LOCATION: PCI bus 0 Device 17 Function 5
Device Status: Device cannot start (Code 10).
Tiptoeing with great trepidation into the Integrated Peripherals area of the BIOS, I find:
On-chip Device Function
X Midi Port IRQ 10 (in blue which I guess indicates an error)
AC97 Modem Device Auto
From this I deduce that the on-board sound system is not running - anyone know how I can get it back? I am loath to take it back to the shop (again) as if they do repair it they'll probably mess up something else :rolleyes:
The system uses an 866AS Ultra RAID motherboard (Award BIOS) with a 2MHz Athlon processor, running XP.
GG

[robdesbois]

GG,
Boot up your computer and you should see a message (straight away) along the lines of 'Press Delete to enter Setup' - do what it says on the tin and you'll get the BIOS setup.
Somewhere under there...look for chip management / peripherals or similar and find 'onboard sound' - check that it lists it as enabled.
Shout if you have troubles finding it :)

Rob

[Groundgripper]

Thanks for that, Rob.


The nearest I could get was on the BIOS page I was already looking at - AC97 Sound Device which sounds like "onboard sound" to me. According to the motherboard instruction book it should be set either to Enabled or Disabled but on the screen you can only select Auto or Disabled, I suppose that's the same, and it was already on Auto so that option seems to be covered, or as near as I can get.

It might be worth trying to re-install the sound drivers, I suppose, although why they should have disappeared is beyond me (as are most things techie!)

I'll ponder that over the weekend.

GG

[robdesbois]

Microsoft's knowledge base recommends updating the driver (or reinstalling if it's not there).
If tech support have been p***ing around with your PC then chances are something's worse than before!
Go into device manager where you were before (I assume) - Start -> control panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager. Find the AC97 component, right click and go to 'Update Driver'. If you have your motherboard driver CD then bung that in the drive at the same time. Alternatively just bung teh CD in and let it install the driver. Difficult to tell more without seeing it (no I'm not coming to Lancs either :})

Good luck!
Rob

[Groundgripper]

Thanks again, Rob.

I was thinking along the same lines and was going to raise the question of updating the drivers. Luckily I have the driver CD and dug it out this evening - one advantage of getting someone to build your PC for you is that you end up with all the relevant CDs and the instruction books!

It appears to be relatively simple so I'll have a bash at it and report back. I note that you can buy updates for the BIOS on the web, I don't know if that is worth doing. Maybe think about that when I have sorted out the sound.

Again, thanks for your help.

GG

[W.R.A.I.T.H]

You might want to check and possibly upgrade your DirectX version. I recall having similar problems some time back on a Soltek - Duron machine, i used to tinker with it a lot and after one such session it just went deaf. I tried all stunts possible, swapping IRQs, changing memory etc, to no avail. Then something else happened which prompted me to upgrade the DX from 9.0b to c, and for reasons totally obscure to me my soundman was back and twice as clever as before. Magic it is, but there are ways to get around it :ok:

[robdesbois]

Wraith - I was going to go off on one and say 'no no no that won't solve it don't be silly!' but I won't - if it worked for you it might work for GG, you never can tell with these things :ugh:
Anyway try the stuff suggested, I wouldn't recommend paying for your BIOS updates - they should be free from the manufacturer's website, and I don't think it'll be the problem anyway. Most likely to be a BIOS mis-setting or mis-matched settings between BIOS and Windows. Have you tried going back to the techies who fiddled with it and telling them off? They should fix that for free seeing as it wasn't broken before...really...might be worth a try, or equivalently find a good wall to hit your head against ;)

[Groundgripper]

Re-installed the sound drivers this morning (despite messages telling that newer versions were already installed) and............................
YES!!!!!!!!!!
Once again the sound of Queen bursts forth at full volume throughout Groundgripper Towers, cats run for cover, dogs bay and Mrs GG yells at me to "turn that bl@@dy racket down!!
normal service has been resumed!
Many thanks for all for your help,
GG

[robdesbois]

GG,
Good to hear - congrats!
And good to see you will use it for decent music too :} rock on Freddie.