You definitely need amplified speakers on this board!! Tried out the one I have in stock, (was building it into a machine anyway) - almost inaudible on a set of passive (non-amplified) walkman speakers, fine with normal amplified speakers. Admittedly the OS is XP Home but this really shouldn't make much difference.

The audio output is simply not high enough to drive passive speakers!

Headphones worked fine though.....but they would. As a general rule you need 0.2 volts to drive headphones / amplified speakers but nearer 2 volts to drive non-amplified. Most PCI audio cards and, I presume onboard audio's would probably need amplified speakers as the output is taken directly off the audio chip.

As was stated earlier, only older ISA audio cards have on board power amplifiers.

She needs to buy new speakers!

John