sound drivers vanished

[kellirvin]

hi

One day OK then the next my sound did not work.

device manager shows everything under sound video game with an "!" in yellow.


both video things and audio things alike. I do not play with this computer and had to be told to look in device manager that is about as far as I go apart from help said uninstall and reinstall drivers that should be fun.

has anyone got a clue why this happened? why both video and sound? and what to do next knowing that I can only just get around on PC?

bad news is that I do not have a disc that I recall and there is no backup drive allotted.


Toshiba Satellite with xp media center edition 5.1 sp3

I would really appreciate any help you can give

Kelv

[Tex37]

A few things to try:

Firstly, if the computer is connected to the net, then open your device manager and right click on the offending item and "update driver" may work, may not.

This could be the result of an erraneous update being applied, if you know when it stopped working then go to system restore and restore to a previous date, this should put the drivers and system back to how they were before they stopped working.

Fail in that, then try and download the drivers from Toshiba's site, if that doesn't work then it's probably a case of a re-install of windows, and if that doesn't fix it then sadly it's probably the sound card that's shot.

Hope it helps!

[Parapunter]

I certainly wouldn't reinstall windows because of a sound problem!

As it's a laptop, I'm guessing it has onboard sound as opposed to a separate soundcard, so my guess is you could download the correct drivers from the Toshiba website. If that driver package is an executable file, then run it after dowbload. If not, go to device manager, right click on the sound device and update the driver using the choose a specific location option.

If that fails, then at the top of the device manager, right click on your computer name and click on scan for hardware changes. If that fails, uninstall your sound device & do the hardware scan again.

[Overdrive]

Just what is happening lately that so many people are getting strange sound problems of varying types, myself inlcuded? Mostly with XP it seems, which generally hasn't happened so often on recent years... odd.

[Parapunter]

Not aware of sudden sound probs on xp en masse per se, however, Creative who are by far the biggest supplier of sound cards globally, messed their customers around terribly with Vista. Essentially, they failed to support a large part of the range as a means of forcing people to but new cards with Vista support. A clever user hacked their drivers to make them work, they barred the guy, Daniel K, from their forum & thretened to sue him.

The subsequent outcry and ensuing negative publicity forced them to relent & co-opt the guy into their community. Even now, the only working driver for Xfi extreme gamer on windows 7 is a Daniel K one. Creative are not well regarded over Vista.

[Overdrive]

I'd heard of the Creative-Vista thing but in less detail than you've given. Not good.

There are though hitherto unheard of hiccups surfacing with XP sound, as many have said to me lately. I've just about sorted one that I had myself recently, posted on here, but I'm not actually sure how! I'm not so comfortable about Creative updates as I was either.

[kellirvin]

so far no luck. removing the extensive list of yellow flagged items just saw them come back by themselves plus some others

they say that no point in refreshing or reinstalling because they are ok

will have more time next week hopefully!

[Parapunter]

I'm not sure what you mean by removing the extensive list of yellow flagged items, but...

If you see a yellow flag against a device in device manager, it means that it is attached to the pc as a device but not working properly for one reason or another. So, what you need to do is get them working one by one.

Not all devices are critical, but most of them will be needed to make the thing work correctly.

What you need to do is click on each yellow flaggged device & read the status message displayed in the pop up box. Most of them will probably tell you that the device driver is not installed. There will be a driver tab on that device. Use this to update the driver. If you're connected to the internet, then choose the option to update the driver by connecting to the internet. Windows will search for a driver automatically. If it doesn't find a driver, make a note of the device & navigate to the Toshiba website and try to download the relevant driver from there. Toshiba should provide drivers as required.

I wonder why you have a machine that shows multiple not working devices? Have you changed any hardware recently or checked for viruses lately? It is unusual that a machine should suddenly have mutliple hardware issues.

[kellirvin]

thank you for the clear instruction


will try again this weekend if time permits Kelv

[Blues&twos]

I'd be a bit careful about allowing Windows to search for and install a driver...I had a horrendous time over Christmas when doing precisely that - the sound card driver Windows found on the internet did not download properly and crashed my PC in such a manner that it would boot, then reboot, then reboot etc etc.

Not being entirely sure what had caused it, once I managed to get my PC working, I did the same thing again!

A quick trip to the sound card manufacturer's website allowed me to download the latest driver which installed perfectly.

That's what I'll be doing in future, but don't let me put you off......

EDIT - having gone back and read earlier posts more thoroughly, the problem in this post was with a Creative sound card, O/S is XP.

[Parapunter]

It's a laptop. It won't have a seperate soundcard.

[barrow]

Install the K-lite codec pack (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm)

Then what you need to do is go to Start > Programs > K-Lite Codec Pack > Configuration > Codec Tweak Tool and check the box next to [Registry] Fix non-working system sound.

[Parapunter]

A codec pack won't fix a malfunctioning device. By definition, they are for coding & decoding audio and video formats. The function described above can be found in the control panel of windows itself. You need to fix the device first.

[timmyneedham]

Is the sound driver anything to do with VIA? I had terrible trouble with my old laptop along exactly the same lines as you describe. The only way to solve it was to either reinstall the drivers from the CD which came with the machine or to go back to a previous restore point which sometimes did the trick. In the end it just wouldn't work at all and I bought a macbook. I don't seem to have any of the problems I used to have with windows. One other thing, have you found that the little volume icon on your toolbar has disappeared? That used to be a symptom.
I hope you find a solution.
TN

[hellsbrink]

Go to here

Toshiba Support - Homepage (http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/home.jsp)#

Select "download", find your model and then download the drivers from the site and install. Also look in "Product Support" for any possble clues to the problem.

Can't help any more without knowing the actual model of laptop, sorry

[sparkie]

I had a similar problem with loss of sound on my Sony Vaio laptolp. I use Vista home premium and recently purchased driver scan on line. It flagged several drivers that were out of date. I diligently downloaded the newer versions - which included updates for my sound drivers.

Once installed and on reboot I lost my sound!

In the end I resorted to selecting a previous restore point and it brought my sound back. Now....have binned driver scan...dont trust it anymore!

My sound drivers are out of date I guess but hey....better than no sound at all