I have installed a new dual output graphics card today. Got it installed and put on drivers and software. System rebooted and it lost the CD-RW and DVD drives. Managed to go onto Microsoft updates and downloaded Service pack 1 for XP. Got that installed and back they came.

The only thing i cannot get working is a soundcard. Have tried the onboard card and a old one i had as a spare. On both cards it says there is no audio device selected in the sound option in control panel but in device manager it says that the devices are working properly.

Did have a go at reloading XP but only have a restore disk that came with the PC but does not work as most of the bits have bean changed.

Any help would be great.

Paul

Did the soundcard work before changing the graphics card?

What model of graphics card have you purchased?

Does it require a power connection to the card (FX5900 ultra) and if it does have you connected it.

What is the power rating of your power supply (watts)?

Soundcard is part of the motherboard (Asus P4S8000D-E Deluxe) Worked fine before.

Other soundcard is a soundblaster live 5.1.

In both cases it finds the cards and install drivers no problems.

The motherboard has a feature that it tells you at what stage it is at when booting up the bios (audio through speakers) and that still works.

Power supply is 400W

No power connectors for sound cards.

In the sound and audio device properties (from control panel) in the audio section sound playback default device is (Modem #1 Line Playback) and same for sound recording and same for voice recording and playback with no options in the drop down boxes. Midi playback is grayed out.

400w should be fine unless you have got carried away with HD's and CD/DVD rom drives like I have, my 550w is struggling.

It does seem strange that the drivers are installing but you cant see the device in sounds control panel.

Have you tried updating the drivers to the latest version, The sblive drivers in XP are very basic and its best to use the ones from the creative labs site. I thinks the asus onboard sound is an AC97 compliant device so that should work to.

I assume none of the devices have a yellow ! on them in device manager.

They did have a yellow ! on them until i put on the service pack 1 then they all went.

I am using the drivers that came with the products then downloaded new drivers for both off the internet but still the same.

I know this may seem a stupid question, but take it from someone who found the same thing after reinstalling the sound card, and buggering around for a long time with it......have you turned the sound off on the amp or speaker?

It may be work trying to (re)install directX.

If the drivers load OK, maybe it's a "hook" problem between the OS "seeing" the card as a sound device and thereby selecting it.

flash the bios, you know you want to

Genius!

Have you checked in the sound option in the control panel? like in attached picture (just ignore the desktop image)

This is the menu where you choose which device does what with sound... IE, i have two soundcards, so this is where i would map settings for it.

Yes the speakers are tuned on.

I cannot change the sound options in the control panel as there is only one option and it is not for any of the sound cards.

Not bothered about reloading XP as all my info is on 3 other hd's but will have to buy another copy of XP to do it.

Was the sound previously supplied by the mother board onboard sound? If so you may need to go into the bios to disable MB onboard sound.

There is weird problem that I have found with SB live cards, try physically moving the the sound card to a different PCI slot on the motherboard, there is a known issue with IRQ conflicts. Try all the spare slots and if that fails, swap some of the other cards round with it.

Matt

I have a SoundBlaster 5.1 card in my PC which has an Asus A7V motherboard. Like Matt, I found that the soundcard is very fussy about which slot it works in - and yes, the problem involved an IRQ conflict!

I've built 2 computers (this is one of them!) and the pain is not in the physical building but the b***dy software!!! When will they ever learn to make software glitch free!!!!

Matt