Hi all-
I have had a lengthy discussion on another board but in the end we could not solve this problem. After reading the posts here, it seems I am having the same problem that a lot of XP people are having, but I am running Windows ME on an old Dell Optiplex GX110 Pentium III system. First of all, Windows ME is not recognizing the onboard chip right, Windows keeps installing the AC97 codec and calling it PCI hardware and an Intel 82801AA chip (!?!), but I have directly seen the chip and seen the documentation for this computer, and it is an AD1881 chip, and Windows ME doesn't have any drivers for that and doesn't recognize it that way. So I had to go on the web and find drivers for that chip, and none of them produced any sound. I disabled the onboard, and installed a Soundblaster Live 24-bit, and under device manager, it says that the PCI card is installed and working fine and the drivers are all installed and everything is fine with no conflicts, but under Sounds/ multimedia everything is greyed out, and I have never had a volume control icon near the clock, and of course it goes without saying that I have no sound. I do a dxdiag and it says I either have no sound card installed or no drivers installed. It sounds very much like what is happening to the XP people, but the XP solutions are not solutions I can do with Windows ME.

So, can anyone explain what I can do to get my Windows ME to recognize my onboard chip properly, maybe that would solve the problem. I could still return the PCI board, if I could get my onboard to work right. Am I reading that SOundblaster has not produced XP drivers, and should I assume that their drivers are not ME compatible as well, even though they claim that they are ME compatible on the box? I was relieved to see so many people here complaining of similar symptoms to what my computer has been doing. At least my post will be believed here.