Sound not working

[crackMonkey]

Recently the sound on my computer stopped working. I tested the speakers, and reinstalled the drivers from the creative labs site, the recovery disk and also from windows (on different occasions ofc). I also moved he card over one slot and tried reinstalling again with no luck.

I am running windows ME with a soundblaster live! value

 

[Mulga]

Looks very much like a card hardware fault. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[ceh4702]

I hope you have the speakers plugged into the right jack. Just Checking. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[crackMonkey]

heh yes I have te speakers plugeed in to the right jack, and before anyone asks it's not muted either.

I'm not the most proficient person with computers, is there any way I can fix a card hardware fault without having to purchase a new one?

 

[Guest_imported]

my pc sound stopped working and i don't know what type o sound card that i have can someone tell me how to check for the type of sound card or adviseon sound?


jenintn8302@aol.com

 

[hchman]

jenintn8302. Go to control panel - system - device manager - sound, video and game controlers.

 

[dinosnake]

OK - the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! series has a nightmare driver stack which can get corrupted. And once corrupted it is a ROYAL pain to set back up.

If you look on the CDROM that came with the card you will see a 'restore' program, which resets the drivers when corrupted. You must 'explore' the CD to find this program as, thanks to AutoPlay, it will never show it to you itself. You can try that restore program before doing the following (Creative hides that program - it took me days of flakey driver debugging before I saw that little helper!)

This is how I got a very, very flakey Live! to finally keep it's driver stack intact:

(1) Restart Windows in Safe Mode (hold down Control key or hit F8)

(2) Right click on 'My Computer', click on the tab 'Device Manager' and in 'Sound and Game Controllers' remove all Creative Labs devices and the codecs and kernel drivers needed for the sound card (which is pretty much all drivers showing in that section assuming that you do not have other sound or multimedia encoders (like a DVD card)). Remove the Sound Blaster MS-DOS emulation from the Creative section of the Device Manager list. Remove any other components listed for SoundBlaster support (I'm going from memory here so I'm not quite sure if I just told you all the possible locations for them).

(2a) If you have drivers for all other system components handy (in case the computer asks), and want to make sure this is done right, go into the 'System Devices' section and remove all 'IRQ holder for PCI steering' items.

(3) Close the Device Manger and do not reboot. Go into the Control Panel, into Add / Remove Programs and uninstall the SoundBlaster utilities.

(4) Turn off the computer completely and remove the sound card from the system.

(5) Start up the computer. If you did part (2a) it will redetect all IRQ's, some components, and a few drivers.

(6) Continue restarting the computer until it no longer wants to automatically restart itself. Then, shut down the computer completely.

(7) Reinstall the sound card in it's original slot.

(8) Start the computer and install it's drivers.

Good luck (I didn't want to add this, but with the Live!'s you'll need it...)

 

[dinosnake]

ALMOST FORGOT!! One more thing:

(2b) Start an MS-DOS box. Type in

cd \windows\inf\other

and hit <enter> to change to the Windows\INF\Other directory. Type in

dir ct*.*

and hit <enter> to see files. The files that come up should only be for the Creative Labs SoundBlaster. If they are, type in

del ct*.*

to delete them. Close the MS-DOS box.

 

[KlondikeMike]

Another thing to check is your system.ini file.
Run MSCONFIG from the Start>Run>msconfig and look in the folder marked &quot;system.ini&quot;.
Look for a line in the section marked [boot] that reads:

drivers=mmsystem.dll

If it's not in there, add a new line in the [boot] section and type it in.
One of my customers had a very similar problem. He has a Compaq Presario running Windows Me and, for no apparent reason, his sound quit working.
I checked the BIOS to make sure the integrated sound chip was enabled (it was), checked for any conflicts or missing devices in the Device Manager (there wasn't) and then reinstalled the drivers. No change.
Checked the system.ini and found the &quot;drivers=mmsystem.dll&quot; line missing. Added it in, and bada-boom, all was right in the universe again.

I've had to fix this little problem for the same cutomer 3 times (twice in-person, and one time I was able to talk him through it over the phone). I finally talked him into &quot;downgrading&quot; to Windows 98se a couple of months ago. His wife called last week to tell me they love the change and haven't had one weird problem since I installed 98 on their system (I've had about 7 service calls from him in the same amount of months. All different problems that I directly attribute to anomolies in Windows Me).
It may be a different problem you're facing, but this is something you should check since your using Me.
Good luck to you and, when you find out what the problem was, please let us know.
-Michael

 

[Guest_imported]

when my Windows ME goes into safe mode from not being properly shut down, the system.ini file gets corrupted some times. Adding the drivers=mmsystem.dll line DOES bring back the multimedia sound controls and voila - audio.

I keep a backup copy of system.ini (renamed to something else) so I don't have to edit it each time.

Thats my 2 cents

Guido