Sound Issue

**Zargov** · July 17th, 2007, 04:02 PM

I have a customer that has an Asus P5V800-MX motherboard using the onboard sound. The sound was working fine for months then suddenly a problem occured. It plays the windows sounds fine but when they try to use media player, iTunes, or any other type advanced type sound the driver crashes and the sound icon in the system tray says there is no sound card installed. The windows sounds continue to work.

Has anyone else had a problem like this or have any suggestions?

Thanks

**NooNoo** · July 17th, 2007, 04:09 PM

Welcome to Windrivers Zargov

Have you teid downloading a new sound driver and installing it?

What is your operating system?

**Zargov** · July 18th, 2007, 02:34 PM

I did download the newest soundmax sound driver when I first came across the problem. It did the same thing... works fine for Windows sounds (XP Home) but crashes when trying to play an mp3, movie, or streaming file.

**NooNoo** · July 18th, 2007, 02:37 PM

OK, could you describe what you mean by "crashes". What exactly happens?

**Percy** · July 18th, 2007, 05:03 PM

Could it be a file association problem? The Windows startup sounds are .wavs, if it errors on other file types you might want to check that.

**slgrieb** · July 18th, 2007, 05:18 PM

Have you had players other than Windows Media Player installed in the past or still installed?

**Zargov** · July 19th, 2007, 09:05 AM

I don't have the exact message as the machine is back at the client until I get a chance to work on it again (the next couple days). Here's a brief history of this and a rundown of what happens.

The unit worked fine at the customers place for several months with one exception. I put in their second drive on the IDE secondary channel so they could access the data off of it and occasionally the BIOS would just decide to try and boot that drive instead of the SATA drive. The cure was simple enough if you would go into the BIOS and switch the boot order back but obviously the customer did not want to do that every other week. Anyway... I brought the unit in to copy the old drive to a folder on the main boot drive and disconnect the old drive.

When I connected the computer I noticed that the sound icon in the system tray was disabled. After checking some things I uninstalled the sound drivers and software and installed an updated version. Everything seemed to work fine although I never tried anything except the Windows sounds. I copied the information from the old hard drive and removed it from the system.

When I brought the computer back to the client everything seemed to work fine until they tried to play mp3's. When they did this a message would pop up saying that there was no sound device on the system. When this happened the icon in the system tray would go disabled. Windows sounds would still work though. Going into the sounds and audio devices in the control panel would indicate that there were no sound devices installed.

Since then, I've removed all of the audio drivers and software and installed the old version as well as the new version, always removing everything before installing a different version. Same problem. I tried disabling the sound card and putting in a PCI sound card. If I do that the system will not even boot although the sound card works fine in another machine. I then tried just disabling the onboard sound and removing the drivers thinking that there might be a residual not getting removed. If I do that the system tries to automatically reinstall the drivers upon reboot which I find odd with the sound disabled. Looking in the BIOS again the sound was enabled after I specifically disabled it.

At this point, I'm almost thinking that it's a motherboard issue but was curious if anyone else has ever seen this before I get a replacement board. Those were the only steps taken and no new software, with the exception of the audio software itself, was ever installed.

Hoping that answers the questions and someone smarter than me has a suggestion that I haven't thought of.

**NooNoo** · July 19th, 2007, 02:08 PM

Try a bios update.

**slgrieb** · July 19th, 2007, 06:24 PM

I asked about alternate media players, because sometimes they fail to release file associations even if ordered to do so unless they are uninstalled. BIOS problem with the board looks pretty likely, since the system won't boot with an add-in soundcard, and you can't disable the on-board sound.

**arch0nmyc0n** · July 19th, 2007, 06:33 PM

Well, you did what I normally do in situations like this and tried another sound card. I figure it's not really worth the time and jsut throw in a generic one. The fact that the sound card stops the machine from booting is odd. Have you tried multiple PCI slots? Regardless, the main problem still exists. I'd probably think they way you are where it could be a motherboard problem. Have you check the motherboard for signs of damage like split capacitors? If everything seems fine a BIOS as Noo suggested would be my next thing to try. If this fails to fix the issue I normally attach another hard drive and do a quick basic install of the same operating system and install the drivers from the manufaturers site and not from any chipset sites. See if the problem arises on a the new install. If it does then yes I'd probably conclude it is most likely a hardware issue. If it does not then it's a software issue.

Hope it helps.