No audio on emachine E525

frithonthehill

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Hello,
My problem is that I accidentally uninstalled my audio device and drivers ("sounds and audio devices - properties" tells me there are "No playback devices" and I have no sound). I have tried installing the relevant drivers from the emachine website but I get the error message "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel".
I tried to do a factory restore but because my laptop does not have the original operating system on it the emachine recovery software won't work (I can't access the disk2disk recovery feature).
I also deleted something called "audio device on High Definition Audio Bus" in an attempt to get windows to look for the missing drivers etc, and now I can't get it back (the hardware update wizard can't find it).
I can't do "system restore" because this function was turned off until after the problem occurred so there are no restore points.
Can anyone help?
Thank you!
 

frithonthehill

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Hello,
The laptop originally came with Vista basic but the former owner put XP Professional on it and now I can't use emachine system recovery. I've tried all the Audio_Realtek drivers that I came across (specifically - http://support.gateway.com/us/en/emac/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=1257), but they all show the same error message ("This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel").

Emachine tech support have given conflicting information - email support said I would need to buy recovery cds from them (costing more than £50), and phone support said this wouldn't work because of XP being there and that I should phone their premium number. I'm not hopeful that premium phone support can guarantee a fix - they'll probably give general (or wrong) advise and charge a fortune.
Do you think trying to get back to factory settings is my best bet? Should I get someone to put a new operating system on there that has all the audio stuff?
Thank you!
 

inerax

Distinguished
Jan 8, 2010
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18,590
also, this is a stupid question. On the emachine website. on the right hand side it lets you select a OS (i missed it at first). you selected windows xp 32/64 right?
 

frithonthehill

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Thanks for your suggestions! I did select the right OS from the emachine website and the driver wouldn't install (same error message). I also tried the relevant one from your link but got that same old message. I guess I will have to put windows 7 or something on there - I was just hoping for a cheaper option. I assume my specs are ok - CPU 900 Celeron, 2.93 GB RAM.
I do appreciate you getting back to me.
 

frithonthehill

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Thanks for the link. It looks potentially promising but also scary. If I click "New" for file types that don't have an extension I get a cursor in a box labelled "File extension". I've got no idea what to put in there. Under "Advanced" I get a drop down list of masses of unintelligible stuff. I think this approach may be beyond me. I will chase it up some more tomorrow though. Maybe I should ask this forum for more details on how to create an association in the folder options control panel. Thanks for the new insight.

Night night.
 

SchizTech

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2011
377
1
19,210
I notice that the drivers on the gateway site are distributed as .zip files (not executable .exe program files). Can you right-click on the downloaded file and click "extract" and run the setup file in the folder that comes out?

Windows XP should support zip files natively and should open the zip as a folder if you double-click but that error makes it seem like the zip support in your OS is not working. Perhaps try a third-party unzipping utility to unzip the file?
 

frithonthehill

Honorable
Jun 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Thanks for the idea. I think probably this was what a friend of mine had in mind when he suggested WinRAR. I have that and it doesn't help. I tried right clicking on the downloaded file but "extract" wasn't an option. Any thoughts on the driver recovery disc?