Windows 7 not detecting sound card?

[Nocandu]

Hi

I helped a friend of mine upgrade his computer from Windows XP to Windows 7 everything went well hardware wise except for his printer and sound card.

His computer is a Dell Dimension E520 about 3 years old.

I finally got the printer to work by manually downloading and installing the drivers for it. Windows did recognize it but wouldn't do the drivers on its own.

I can not get the sound card to work.
When I look in Device Manager it has an error indication and says that no drivers are installed for this device. It does not identify the device name.

I think it would work if I installed the drivers just as the printer did but I don't know what kind of sound card it has.

He can't find his build sheet and I tried everything including Belarc Advisor and nothing detects the ID of the sound card.

Anyone have any ideas?

I tried to install the drivers from his Dell disk, he has several and none of them identified as to which of his Dell computers going back ten years they are for.

I didn't find any that worked.
I'm surprised that W7 didn't detect the sound card and install them automatically. I didn't have any trouble on my old computer when I upgraded it. Everything worked right off.

Any help welcome, I'm going to look up his computer at Dell and if I have to I can tell him to call them, but it seems like there should be a way to tell what it has.

Mike

 

[Nocandu]

Hi

"The Sound of Silence."

When I got to my friends house yesterday I brought the drivers that I received from Dell on a disk.
My plan was to install the original drivers for the computer and then try and run them in Windows XP compatibility mode.

Before I did that I checked one last time to see that everything was set correctly in the Sound Setting windows.
I tried the tests and got no response even though it did show the sound card was installed.

I also went ahead and installed his new web cam so that I would have a working microphone. The web cam worked fine with no problems as did a new external hard drive.

Now back to the sound.

I removed the sound card in Device Manager and rebooted the computer. Then I inserted the disk to start the install process. I instantly got the "These drivers are not compatible with this operating system, installation is being shut down" message. That was that, no chance to try and run them in Compatibility Mode.

Damn, back to square one!

With nothing else to do I rebooted the computer again for about the 20th time since this process started.

This time I got, (for the first time) the "Windows has found new hardware and is installing the drivers for it message.

It then stated that "The Hardware was installed successfully" and identified the sound card correctly as a Sound Blaster XFI card.

I opened the sound window and tried the test button.

No sound, but!!! I did notice that for the first time the volume indicator moved every time I hit the test button. The when I switched to the microphone the indicator moved up and down as we talked.

So it's making a sound but we can't hear it.

We again for the I don't know how many times unplugged and replugged the sound wires on both the computer and the single under monitor speaker.

Still no sound.

Finally I rebooted the computer again for no good reason that I could determine, I just didn't know what else to do.

When Windows opened we heard the Windows Startup Sound!!

I have no idea why it finally started working but everything is working, I got his Skype set up and the sound quality both from the microphone and the speakers is great.

So the problem is solved how, we may never know, just one of those computer things. I have detailed everything we did in hopes that someone may have an idea what happened.

The drivers that are now installed are the Windows 7 drivers that I got from Creative for the XFI and that didn't work the last time tried.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Mike