Audio-driver-problems in WinXP

MrBurns

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First I have to say, that I am from Austria (Europe) and so my English maybe isnt perfect.



A few days ago I installed Windows XP in addition to 98 in dual boot. I also installed the nForce2-driver right at the beginning and everything seemed to be fine until I needed sound. When I first needed sound, I wanted to open Sound Storm to set my sound to 5.1 channel. Then I got a message, that the device wasnt installed. So I thought, that I should maybe install the realtek-driver, because my mainboard is nForce2, but it uses a Realtek-chip instead of the default nForce2 chip. After this it still didnt work, so I thought, that I should look into the device manager. I saw "Realtek AC'97 Audio" and "NVIDIA nForce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit (Dolby(R) Digital)" and there was a yellow exclamation mark on "NVIDIA nForce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit (Dolby(R) Digital)". I didnt look before, so i dont know, if it was already there before. So I decided to completely uninstall the NVIDIA-audio-driver under Control Panel -> Software and to install the Realtek-driver instead. After that I had "Realtek AC'97 Audio" two times, once w/ the yellow exclamation mark and the sound still didnt work. So I tried once again to install both "Realtek AC'97 Audio" drivers for the device w/ the exclamation mark (When I go to "choose a device from a list" I see two "Realtek AC'97 Audio" drivers, when I select "only show comaptible devices, I only see one).

After I found out, that my mainboard has APIC and that I can disable it in the BIOS I uninstalled the APIC-driver and disabled it in the BIOS afterwards, because I have read somewhere, that APIC causes more problems than it solves. After that I tried all driver-combinations again, but it didnt help. I installed a lot programs and changed a lot Windows-settings (I even made a reinstall w/o formatting) before I first tried,

if my sound works, so I dont know, if I had the problem from the beginning or if they are caused by something I did after I first install the drivers.


Can anyone please help me?


I never had any problems w/ the nForce-drivers on Win98. I once tried the Realtek-drivers on 98, but they didnt work.


Here are two screenshots from my device manager:

http://members.chello.at/edith.matuskovics/Geraetemanager.jpg

http://members.chello.at/edith.matuskovics/Geraetemanager_Realtek.jpg

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MrBurns

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I now tried to make a repair installation of WinXP, but it didnt work, because after the reboot setup thought, that it was in safe mode. For details see here:

<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/software/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=41454#41454" target="_new">http://forumz.tomshardware.com/software/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=41454#41454</A>

<A HREF="http://www.nethands.de/pys/show.php4?user=MrBurns" target="_new">My System</A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by MrBurns on 12/20/03 05:07 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

MrBurns

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I now made a complete reinstall of XP (but w/o fromatting) because I didnt find any other solution and someone in a diffferent forum said, that the registry wouldnt be overwritten. He was wrong, but this wasnt such a big problem, because I just restored the last working backup of my registry (I exportet the whole registry before I had this problems because making restore points didnt work before the reinstal). But afterwards I recognized, that I will have to reinstall most programs anyway, because they miss a dll or something else.

I installed my PC as standard PC, because I read somewhere, that you can solve audio driver problems when doing this. The only disadvantage that I got from this is that the PC doesnt turn itself off anymore. I also disabled all unused hardware in the BIOS (serial port, midi,...). I only have two IRQs which are used by two devices anymore: 5 and 10, the second device is the USB-port for both IRQs.

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pat

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on the device marked by a yellow exclamation mark, right-click on it and update driver. let windows search for drivers. You must have the latest drivers installed, either from your cd or by download

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!
 

MrBurns

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Thank you for the answer, but I already solved this problem last year.

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