Uninstalled myself into a corner (SoundMax/driver not found on ThinkPad X31)

My computer:
IBM ThinkPad X31 laptop running XP Pro SP2 DirectX 9.0c
Motherboard: IBM 2884JUU Intel Odem i855PM Intel 8280DBM ICH4-M
Sound: AD1981B chipset SoundMax Integrated Audio

So I decide to clean a few things off of my system, and I used add/remove programs to remove four programs: Civilization III, Everquest II Trial of the Isle, Crystal Reports, and Bloomba.

After that, no sound. Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices says "No audio device." Clicking on the Control Panel | SoundMax icon simply does nothing (no applet appears.)

Woops, I think. I deleted something I shouldn't have. No problem, I think. I'll just uninstall the sound drivers and install them again. Strange, though -- I can no longer find anything like a sound card in my device manager. I do manage to uninstall SoundMax through add/remove programs. I reboot. Then I try to reinstall the sound driver from IBM:

Audio Driver 5.12.01.5410
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-61604

I get the ugly SoundMax BMP screen and it goes okay until the end: "Driver not found! Reboot your system, then run this setup again." There seems to be no way around this message. I have tried everything I can think of and everything I can find on this board and I am at the end of my rope.

Symptoms:
- No sound devices in device manager except Audio Codecs, Legacy Video Capture Devices, and Video Codecs.
- No audio device in Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices
- Sound card driver won't install due to above error.


Things I've tried:
0. Do what it says on the error message -- reboot and try again several times. No luck.

1. Use system restore to rollback to the last save point. No luck. This does nothing.

2. reboot to safe mode and uninstall everything under audio (not much there though) and wait for windows to detect new hardware: no new hardware ever detected. Try installing sound driver again. Same error.

3. install directly with .inf instead of setup.exe -- inf doesn't appear on select list.

4. install a few soundmax driver packages suggested different places on this board. same "driver not found!" problem with every package.

5. install every IBM driver package that looks like it has anything to do with motherboard chipsets. done and all are up to date.

6. install a few intel reference packages for motherboard chipsets. just casting around blindly at this point. they all install fine and don't do anything.

7. look for enable/disable audio option in BIOS so that I can toggle it a few times. I can't find any option for audio in ThinkPad BIOS. No likely candidates under other menus either (e.g., PCI).

8. run a variety of diagnostic programs (Everest, PC Doctor) -- they all just say that no sound card is installed.

9. run dxdiag -- says everything is OK but there is no sound card. Updated DirectX to 9.0c. Install eems to work but does not address the problem.

I would say the sound card has failed except that I seem to have caused all of this with the uninstall. Please help! I am running out of things to try and I have poured time into this monster. I miss my sound!

Begging,
Christian

try sfc /scannow from start - run

http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

Just a small thought- You probably have a mute hotkey. Try toggling this & see what happens. (Shouldn't do anything, but might be a HW kill switch?)

-Leezer-

Thanks Mayet and leezer3. Okay I tried sfc and it went through the whole blue bar without telling me anything in particular. I don't know if that means it worked or that it didn't work. Then I rebooted and tried again: no dice.

I also tried the mute hotkey. No luck. Sometimes the longshot does it. To be clear, the speakers still work: I get that beep on startup and also an occasional beep -- as though I didn't have a sound card installed.

Aaarrggh aaarrrggh aarrrgggh
Christian

I also checked with IBM (this is how desperate I am) and they told me to pay $169 to reactivate the warranty on this machine and then they would talk to me about it. Aaaarrggh. I don't have $169 for this.

Christian

Next thing I spose is tiddling in the BIOS. I know you say you have checked, but try resetting it to the defaults or the optimum, you never know :)
Also try upgrading the BIOS (If applicable).

If all else fails, you might want to go looking for a USB soundcard (Should be able to get one for under $50 (Guess based on £ prices!)

Edit: Oh, a dopey question :D Are you the administrator account or a personal one? (The IBM site suggests you may have issues installing if not)

Cheers

-Leezer-

Thanks for the continued efforts. Okay, I am the proud owner of a new BIOS. It did not affect the problem though.

There is REALLY no audio option anywhere in the BIOS (new and old version). And PCI menu is just a list of interrupts or something. I am the administrator account.

How can this be so hard? Is there a way to reach the on board sound card somehow outside of the OS in order to test it? Or is the fact that the computer beeps sufficient? I wish I knew more about sound cards. Just brainstorming.

Christian

Try a Knoppix live CD.
That should have sound, but could well not :lol: (Don't have the hardware support lists to hand)
Sounding more & more like your sound chip has simply gone. You might want to try and find a service center, as opposed to simply talking to the helpline- If this is a known problem with your model, then there is a good possibility that they could deal with it, even though it is out of warranty.

Cheers

-Leezer-

Thanks again leezer3. Okay I got the PC Doctor for DOS 2.0 diagnostic disks and there are two sound tests: internal speaker and sound card.

The internal speaker test passes fine but then PC Doctor for DOS reports there is no sound card and the sound card test is grayed out. It seems like this test should pass if the problem were a Windows driver. I am concluding that the onboard sound chip actually crapped out somehow. Is that right? A second opinion would make me more confident. I have no experience with this kind of problem.

Edit: So that means the whole uninstall thing was just an incredible coincidence, right? Is that plausible?

Blargh,
Christian

Have you tried to go to windows updates to see if there is any driver available for you? If not try that

Next it may not be the right driver you are trying to install. I presume you looked up your motherboard model and are installing what it says. If that is the case download a program like everest, run it and see what it says for your audio. It may turn out not to be the one you think it is.

There wont be an actual sound card section in device manager. It will load under the video sound and game controllers.

there should be a number of devices listed there. Please if you can paste them all in here along with your everest results.

http://www.lavalys.com/ <-- everest

Thanks Mayet. I posted all of this information in my first post. everest reports no sound card installed. I listed the scanty contents of the video sound and game controllers section of device manager in the first post as well. Not sure what other everest info you want -- all of the audio tabs are just blank (grey) and the motherboard details are in my first post (including the onboard sound chipset from the computer's specs, not everest). The whole everest report is pretty huge.

I tried windows update and it did not find anything for me.

If it was a windows driver problem wouldn't the PC Doctor for DOS tests from the disk pass? This is what I am thinking about now.

Christian

Quite possibly not ;)
From what I can see on thier site, the latest version is V5, and your laptop is pretty (Relatively) new.
What you really do need :D is a decent new Linux CD, as I've checked & your HW is supported from approx kernel ver 2.4.

Starting to sound more and more like a co-incidence, but you never know!

Cheers

-Leezer-

Any luck with your problem niftyc?I was doing some cleanup yesterday and uninstalled soundmax...and i am in the same boat.tried installing the soundmax stuff and got the same message "Driver not found! Reboot your system, then run this setup again".Please let me know if you were able to find a solution. I am running xp pro on a dell400sc.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windo...not-found.html

follow instructions in the last post by "grendyll".

Lovely, glad its fixed or you chintuk :thumbs: a question & a fix, so welcome to windrivers forums ! :)

As a summary for later folks who pass by, rather than let windows choose what device it wants to install from where (let it auto-redetect), choose 'have disk' & point it to the driver for sound provided by the manufacturer of your motherboard.

Had similar situation to niftyc, even though my laptop is an IBM T43p. After going through all suggested steps from this thread and others, sent in the machine for repair. The problem found was a bad AD1981B (Analog Device) chip forcing a MB replacement. In my case, the symptom that pointed to more of a HW issue was when you selected the .inf driver file from "Have Disk..." selection, the window was always blank after selecting ANY .inf file. After that, the NEXT tab was greyed out, not allowing further driver install.

Also, PC Doctor diagnostics indicatated "No Audio Device", and the Audio test just "FAILED" with no further indications or error codes.

Ultimately, the BIOS as well as OS just never did see any Audio device at all. I guess I just had to try everything else to be convinced!!!

I tried to follow instructions in the post by "grendyll" but could not - I couldnt figure out how to remove the audio codecs and things.

I like the approach and thought it may work, but I am still stuck. My config and experience is almost identical to NiftyC. I have a T40 with 2 GB of RAM and think something changed on my system when I was cleaning up. I too get the 'driver not found' - reboot error and basically did all the things NiftyC did.

NiftyC - did you ever get yours working?? I am still stumped and have tried all the obvious steps. Of course the recommended course of action from IBM support was to uninstall and reinstall the Soundmax stuff from control panel. What they dont tell you is that once you uninstall it - you will never get it installed again.

And as for the grendyll post - I have no sound card to remove from the device manager screen. I have seen other working T40s and know I 'should' have one there - something like 'Soundmax integrated audio device' is what I should have.

Any one got any more ideas??

Thanks

Ahhhhh - just read DaddyOs post - this is EXACTLY what I am getting - my next step will be to 'send the ole boy in for a new motherboard' - hopefully this will get me up and running again.

Thanks for the posts

I have the same sitation as NiftyC and others, but on a ThinkPad R51 (2883) running WinXP Pro (sp2) with absolute latest bios and drivers. I uninstalled SoundMax from Control Panel Add/Remove Progams, now can't figure how to reinstall it. Before uninstalling SoundMax, the systray's icon's only choice was to have it show in the systray. In other words, it did nothing but allow it self to be shown -- it didnt' change volume, balance, or anything else -- which is why I decided to uninstall it. I figured that it was corrupted, and that installing the new sound driver from the IBM/****** website would make everything right again. Now have nothing in Device Manager to uninstall and rebooting doesn't make Windows see anything to be installed.

DID ANYONE EVER FIND A SOLUTION?

A couple ideas is all:

If you haven't got PnP (plug and play) ON or if the device isn't plug and play you won't see it on reboot I don't think.

If you go to control panel (XP here) and Add Hardware and use Show All Devices does the sound chip show (could be Soundmax or IAG).

If not, try Standard System Devices (left column) Legacy Audio (right column) and then have disk (if you have a driver disk or have them downloaded to a folder.

just ideas - I am guessing here

If you haven't got PnP (plug and play) ON or if the device isn't plug and play you won't see it on reboot I don't think.

I can only assume that the Soundmax sound-card-circuitry which is embedded on the motherboard of my IBM Thinkpad R51 (2883) notebook is plug and play and p-n-p is enabled.

If you go to control panel (XP here) and Add Hardware and use Show All Devices does the sound chip show (could be Soundmax or IAG).
No, it does. The closest thing is the appearance of "Audio Codecs," "Legacy Audio Drivers," and "media control devices," all of which Windows XP Pro (sp2) reports are working properly.

If not, try Standard System Devices (left column) Legacy Audio (right column) and then have disk (if you have a driver disk or have them downloaded to a folder.

When I try this, Windows says that legacy audio is working properly, so it won't let me install it again.

I downloaded from IBM a PC Doctor app which you burn to a bootable cd. It does diagnostics. The sound test fails, but the speaker test, which lets you generate virtually any frequency of sound you want, does work.

This Soundmax "driver not found" error has been reported around the web many times. I can't believe that a widspread bug like this hasn't been solved yet.

FWIW...

When I run the Belarc Advisor 7.1f (free from www.belarc.com) on my IBM thinkpad R51 (sub-model 2883), Belard reports on hardware and software present. Concerning "multimedia" it reports "none detected." However, when I run it on my other IBM R51 (sub-model 2887, which is slightly different), it reports "SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio."

WTH??? The hardware is still there. It can even generate tones (see mention of PC Doctor). I can't see why Belarc would say that there is no soundcard present (driver or no driver).

I am having the same problems as reported previously in this thread... I have a Thinkpad t41 which has an onboard soundcard but for some reason is not being detected.

I have system sound, done the speaker tests in the bios which works fine but it does not detect an audio card so that part of the test fails.

I've attempted to install the soundmax drivers and received the "driver not found error" reboot message but that does nothing.

I've tried manually installing the drivers and when I click "have Disk"... I go to the folder, select the .inf file but when I click ok, it does not show up to install.

I've had the System Board replaced twice and still the onboard sound card is not being detected. I don't believe I got stuck with two bad motherboards so It has to be something in my configuration.

I've read about disable/enabling sound in the bios but have not been able to find anywhere in the bios to do that. Am I missing something there?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

please read my post http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=75846,
im having the same problem but with an hp, who have no drivers on their site

please help, im getting dominated in counter strike w/o sound haha

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...id=MIGR-4YLR6P

I've tried the IBM site... Thanks. The system is not detecting the audio card period. It's onboard so I've had the system board replaced (twice). Initially when it was replaced I reported no sound and just this week a new board was installed incase the onboard sound was bad. No luck. Still not being detected.

If you have had a new mobo installed and it also shows no on board sound in your comp that would suggest to me something is wrong with the Windows installation relative to the style mobo.

If I reinstall windows xp pro.... will I lose all my currently installed programs? Basically can I reinstall on top of the old or do I need to reformat my hard drive? I do not want to have to reinstall the world if I don't need to.

Thanks!

FWIW...

I gave up on all attempts to fix this and just called IBM and got a new motherboard under warranty. I did *not* reinstall the OS. The work was done by IBM off-site, so I don't know if IBM installed any drivers after swapping boards. However, I am *Certain* that my problem was failed hardware, because every conceivable attempt to reinstall drivers failed before swapping boards. That doesn't mean that everyone else's problem was a bad motherboard too, but I suspect that the Soundmax embedded sound hardware is simply failing on a lot of computers.

Just my $0.02.

P.S. -- My Thinkpad R51 was out of warranty, but I was able to buy a maint. contract for about $160. All I had to do was wait 2 weeks to use it. A lot cheaper than buying a motherboard myself and IBM did the work. IBM does'nt even care if it is broken when you buy the contract.

This thread described the exact problem I had and there have been several distressed people who tried many of the same solutions I did and then resolved themselves to give up or an expensive solution. You know that doesn't make any sense (that it's not correctable). And it's not a hardware problem either - obviously it was caused by uninstalling software. How can that be a software problem??? You are all right to think that there SHOULD be a simple and low-key fix!

-----------------------
Computer description:

A self built ASUS from a good number of years ago. SoundMax was included as part of the original drivers and manufacturer software (which was a lot). It has an onboard sound card.

------------------------
Problem description:

Not wanting the SoundMax utilities, I uninstalled the program thinking that it wouldn't affect the sound drivers themselves. I was wrong.

The sound card was simply not recognized after this action. Windows identified that there was no sound card or no drivers.

When I tried one of the SoundMax drivers mentioned in this thread it came up with the familiar graphics from the company (cheesy DJ rocking, etc.) but soon in the instillation I got the error that I didn't have drivers or something, and searching for that exact error brought me here.

--------------------
Things I was doing wrong:

I was looking in the wrong place. The driver was wrong. I was getting it from generic driver sites and I didn't have any real information about what kind of motherboard it was.

Basically I didn't know what I was doing.

---------------------
How a friend fixed it:

Go to Device manager. Sound card will be in either
-Sound Video and game controllers with a "!"
-Other devices with a "?"
(You know this by now if you've gotten to my post here)

Right click on the sound card and go to properties. Go to "Driver" tab. Look at "device instance id" or "compatable id". Copy the string, but the things you need are numbers following the VEN_ and DEV_.

Back in Device Manager:
If you have some drivers installed, right click and uninstall them.

Go to "Action->Scan for hardware changes" This just refreshes the stuff.

Now, if you're in my boat, you're using an ASUS motherboard. You need the drivers for this motherboard. My model is here:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=cFuVCr9bXXCckmcK

Perhaps yours is different. This is where you need the DEV string. Mine was DEV_24d5. I was able to connect that to the motherboard model. Search Google for the DEV_ string and try to find a motherboard model number. Then search the ASUS site for that model. You may find this step non-trivial. Good luck.

Anyway, you should find the appropriate driver page on the ASUS site for your motherboard like the link above. Obviously, you need the latest Audio drivers. Download that. Run it and you should get the same SoundMax instillation.

If you got this all right the instillation should proceed correctly instead of giving the error and your sound should start working again. Without restarting it gives a big red cross over the SoundMax control panel, but your sound works, so what do you care?

---------------
Let me know if you manage to repeat these steps and fix the problem. I thought my computer was a goner after reading this thread, but everything was fine aside from my own idiocy (as I thought). If you have the problem described here, it's fixable, you're just screwing something up.

5 years,not bad,lol