No Sound At All - XP Pro, Creative Audigy LS

[Rhys666]

I've been looking at a friends XP Pro machine. Recently the sound has completely gone - and I do mean completely. There's a Creative Audigy LS and onboard sound, neither of which now seem to be working. No matter how you configure the devices theres no sound. Also, when the creative drivers are installed for the Audigy LS device the machine hangs during boot and doesn't get to the logon screen. It just stops between the XP splash screen and the login screen, eventually you hear the hard disc spin down and the monitor switches off but the machine is still on and you have to use the reset button.

The machine can be recovered to a working state with no sound by using F8 and booting into the last known good configuration, but then we're back to the no sound problem and the creative Audigy drivers are no longer installed.

I don't know exaxtly when this started and I don't know if anythings been installed or removed thats damaged something. I can't see any virus, spyware or malware and am quite honestly just trying to avoid rebuilding the system to get the sound back.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas as to a possible root cause, or another path to track before rebuilding the thing it would be greatly appreciated as I'm out...

Rhys
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense Edsgar Dijkstra

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

 

[electronicsfreak]

If this system was built by hand, check the jumpers on the motherboard. As if it supports front audio and front audio is not used they usualy require to jumpers in certain locations to feed the audio back to the rear. I almost sent a motherboard in for repair once as I couldnt get the audio to work untill I remembered about that. Anyways let us know if this is of any use.

 

[Rhys666]

The system was built by hand, from some of my older kit following upgrades on my main machine. The sound did work until apparently it just stopped (Hmmmmm) apparently so I know the jumpers etc. were OK.

Rhys
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense Edsgar Dijkstra

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

 

[Nelviticus]

Hmm, sounds like a case for System Restore Man. Feel his power!

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[GringoMcC]

Have a look to see if the sound output is configured for 'digital only'. If that's the case, you won't get any noise out of the analogue outputs.

Good luck!

 

[michigan]

Before a rebuild, I would suggest a couple things first:
(assuming you've checked the easy things - all wires connected to correct input/output, volume not set to mute)

From last known good configuration
Go to the device manager --> sound, video, game controllers
See if there is anything with an exclamation mark. Also, while there, locate the Creative Audigy entry --> highlight and right click to see the properties. Once open, go to the 3rd tab (Driver) and check the date. You can also try "RollBack" - This has been very helpful for me in the past. For example, during one of my Microsoft updates, it listed an optional update for my sound card. So I grabbed it . . .and after the update - no sound at all. Used the roll-back option and sound was back. Perhaps your friend grabbed an update that screwed something up.

Many times if it hangs at boot there's a conflict of resource - maybe he got a new USB device that is using an IRQ the sound was - a shared IRQ, etc... From the last known good config, I would search for any trace of that Creative Audigy driver/file. Uninstall if you find it. Also you can try add/remove programs. Once any & all traces are gone, try a reinstall. You may want to visit Creative's site to grab the latest drivers too.

Last suggestion, if those all fail again, remove any trace of the drivers. Go to add/remove hardware. If it's there blow it away. Shut down. Un-seat the sound card and leave it unconnected. Boot up. It should come up fine without hanging. Shut Off. Re-seat the card & Boot up. It should see it as new hardware. If it asks for the drivers point it at either your install CD or the downloaded drivers from Creative's web site.

Good Luck

 

[johnbullas]

Had this a while back with onbaord sound on a MB (Win 2k pro) ...

Uninstall the sound card as a device in contol panel> system> hardware > device manager

Reinstall it

or simply run the drivers disk for the card again

The card was visible in Device Manager but simply not working, may have been being corrupted by tweaking in sibelius settings (

http://www.sibelius.com/)