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Sound card missing

Old 27th Mar 2012, 08:42
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Sound card missing

My old laptop cannot find its internal sound card. I have tried using add hardware but without success,can anybody help please?
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 09:51
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Can you be a bit more specific please? Which operating system are you using? Is the sound not working or can you not find the sound controller in device manager? If the former have you checked the basics? Are the speakers muted or is the volume control right down? Have you plugged in recently to your USB socket another sound and the laptop is still trying to use that device?
More info will help diagnose.
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 12:40
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Xp pro sp3. In device manager it shows realtek
Hd audio but when I run dxdiag no sound card is found. I only get a beep out of the laptop speakers amd no other sound
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 13:06
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Just to confirm the device is working, right click on the device in device manager and click properties - it should say the device is working properly.
Next open the Volume Control and click on Options then Properties and your realtek should be shown as the mixer device, click the drop down arrow and see if there are other devices there, let us know the list of devices that it shows.
You can try reinstalling the driver from scratch. Make sure that first you download the up-to-date driver for your laptop from your manufacturers website. If it is a zipped file extract the contents to a folder and remember where that folder is. Check you have the instructions for installing the device driver.
Then right click on the device in the device manager and select uninstall. Reboot the laptop and follow the instructions for installing the device driver. If all goes well robert should be your mothers brother.
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 16:35
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The device is not listed on the device manager page or under sound in dxdiag.I can only find thedriversand not the card.I cannot adjust volume on the laptop.

I have since run ccleaner which restored some missing registry files and deleted the realtek driver. I then rebooted and the audio device re-installed itself and is now working.
Thank you for your help.

Last edited by tubby linton; 27th Mar 2012 at 18:04.
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 18:46
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I'm guessing here, but I suspect you may have been hit by a windows update bug Windows XP update isn't very good at identifying AC97 sound chips, and often installs a Realtek driver incorrectly - even when the actual chip present is C-Media, Via or other The problem only normally happens if you select the "optional" updates along with the essential ones
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Old 27th Mar 2012, 20:20
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Milo the driver i downloaded was on the windows update website. I should know better as I once down loaded a driver for my pc flatscreen from the same site and endured a week of bsod before I could find an opportunity to roll it back!
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 00:26
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That rather proves the point Only ever update drivers if either
a) something isn't working or
b) you KNOW the update will give extra capability
Updating "just because its there" isn't worth the risk, unless you know how to reverse any problems that ensue
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 11:14
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I would suggest that updating hardware drivers from MS should only be done if there are no updated drivers available from the hardware vendor.

SD
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 15:18
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SD,
I would also suggest that the updated driver from the laptop/PC manufacturer should be used. I have found that one more than one occasion the generic driver from the chipset manufacturer has been modified by the manufacturer and the generic one whilst appearing more uptodate does not work properly.
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 15:18
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I had a similar issue with a suddenly non-working integrated webcam not functioning, nor showing up anywhere, after running
CCleaner. After figuring out what the cause was I used CCleaner to restore the registry to the state it was prior to ccleaner's last run.
Voila, it worked find afterward.

Although I make a lot of use of ccleaner it does leave me wondering sometimes if it acts unruly on occasion.
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 15:41
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srobarts, good point.

I think we are all agreed that MS hardware driver updates should be avoided!

I think that the only MS driver updates that I have implemented were for printer drivers that were no longer supplied by HP.

SD
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Old 28th Mar 2012, 18:29
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Give Microsoft their due, they overall did a pretty good job with the driver detection in WinXP, and an excellent one in Vista and Win7 There aren't many issues I can think of that are common: just this one with the AC97 sound drivers (always ID the motherboard or laptop maker and download from there) and a problem with ALPS laptop touchpads where the updated driver doesn't work In some cases M$ actually do a better job than the manufacturers. For instance there is a perenniel problem with some Intel chipsets where Intel's chipset drivers crash the USB ports - resulting in a BSOD at boot Only way round it is to extract/unpack the Intel driver exe using 7-zip, and then update the "missing" items in device manager from the .inf files, leaving the USB drivers alone as the native Microsoft drivers are stable
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