Thread: Sound Drivers/Card Issue

Hey, me again.... I feel like I'm starting to frequent Tech Talk too much, and it's never for anything good....

Sooo, here's the story of the past few days which has led me to this point. My computer was shutting off randomly when I had games running, I took it into a repair shop, they tinkered with it, put it through diagnostics and the like, found the CMOS battery was faulty, told me that that wouldn't cause the computer to shut off (I looked it up, and one of the first results said that that was indeed a symptom of a faulty CMOS battery), so she decided to look further into what might be causing a problem. Apparently there was a card for a dial up modem connection or something too close to the video card, so she removed it, to give it some space, charged me, and sent me on my way. Now the computer doesn't shut off anymore, but I have no sound.

When I first got it back, it had no sound, and my Realtek Audio Manager icon wasn't coming up anymore because all of my Startup tasks were no longer in the Startup list for some reason. I found it in my Program Files, and tried to launch it, but just absolutely nothing happened, so I tried to reinstall it. Now, not only do I not have any sound, the computer now makes the beeping noises that I can only assume a computer with no sound makes in order to tell it's user something since the computer has no other sound, and DxDiag tells me that I have no sound card, and Winamp tells me that I have a bad DirectSound driver. My System Information lists my sound card as ATI High Function Driver for High Definition Audio, which I'm fairly sure is incorrect, and I've read that it's just some sort of side feature of my ATI Radeon 4850 video card.

So, what the hell has happened here? How do I know what my sound card is, and then how do I know which drivers to get for it? Is it possible that maybe the computer repair person mistook my sound card for some sort of dial up connector, or something? Because I really can't think of why else I can't get any sound.... Gahh, it's just one damn problem after another with this thing....

Your soundcard has most likely been knocked lose. If you can open your computer without voiding warranty, I suggest you do that and push the card back into place. It's a very simply process, you simply just take the left side off your computer case and find the card that controls sound, and push on it, maybe with a bit of force. If you hear a click or feel movement, that probably means it was out of its bus.
Perhaps the girl at the repair shop forgot to secure the card, so you might have to do that yourself. In some cases, you can simply secure it with a kind of contraption, in other cases you'll have to use a small screw to secure the card.

Your sound card is most likely sitting in an HD audio bus, or whatever they're called, and they are very small and cards are prone to getting lose, if you move the computer around or plug something into the card, and it is not properly secured inside the computer.

If your sound card is onboard, then we'll have to approach from a different angle.

All this should be done while the computer is turned off, of course.

I agree it sounds like something got knocked loose, but if you don't know whether you had a sound card, you probably didn't. If you're plugging your speakers into the same place you were before, then the card that was removed was definitely not a sound card. Most likely you have one of the RealTek on-board systems. If that's the case, the repair shop may have done physical damage to your motherboard. If you're able to open your case, at least have a look and see if anything is obviously disconnected (if you haven't done this before, have a look in your computer's manual).

Can you tell us more about your system? If it's off-the-shelf, then make and model. If it's custom, the motherboard make and model.

In any case, I sympathize. I was having similar problems just a week or so ago. My computer was freezing up frequently, I think because it was in too cold a corner and mostly idling, so not producing a lot of heat. I moved it to a warmer area, and the freezes stopped, but I lost all sound :S I went through all the uninstalling and reinstalling of drivers only to discover that I had a bad line-out wire, one of three connecting the speaker system to my sound card. These things can be a pain in the butt, but there's almost always a solution.

Thanks, I don't have time to go into the computer right now to check it out, but I'll do that sometime tomorrow morning or night hopefully.

My computer is an HP, and the model number is m7580n I think. Let me know if that's right, I'm not sure if that's the model number or not.

Alright, an update here, I did some searching and found what I believe are the correct drivers, however, when I go to install them, it gives me an error saying: "Microsoft Bus driver should be loaded in your system before installing Realtek HD whatever...." Something along those lines anyway. I did some more searching, but all the solutions seem to point towards "upgrading" to SP2, which I can't because we're already past SP2, so that's definitely not my solution....

What the fuck is going on here? I just got Starcraft 2 up and running in a sandbox mode, but I can't hear any of the wonderful sounds, and my awesome sound system with the sub is going to waste right now.... Any other ideas what this could be?

Edit:

Also;

Originally Posted by Taosaur

If you're able to open your case, at least have a look and see if anything is obviously disconnected (if you haven't done this before, have a look in your computer's manual).

After taking a look inside, (I have no idea where the computer manual is) there are some red and yellow wires with white elongated plastic endings hanging around, not plugged in to anything. I'm not sure if these are relevant to anything though, or if they've always been like that, I can't really remember looking at them before when I've had it opened up.

Double Edit: It's working now, I went into the CMOS or BIOS options, whatever it is, and messed around with some stuff. There was an option that said "Onboard Sound" or something like that, it was set to "Auto", so I switched it to "Enabled", and for some reason that made it work. Thanks for the help guys.

Sweet, glad it wasn't a hardware issue.