Sound problems with ADI 1881 in Compaq 5WV280

So, I'm doing a fresh install for a friend who has none of the documentation for his box...however I do know that he's never installed any hardware in it. I do a reformat, and fresh install of 98se and am now in the process of installing the drivers for a few devices. All seems to be smooth with the exception of the sound card. I have done next to everything I can think of to get sound working. I have tried driver after driver from the compaq site, and abroad...windows updates...checking the bios...The device shows as working properly in the device manager, but when you check multimedia properties, there are no options to select the preferred playback device etc. Also when I attempt to check the soundmax mixer... I get an error mentioning unable to init directsound. I've been tinkering with this for hours , anyone have any insight?

forgot to mention this is onboard audio

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Originally Posted by drivers

and fresh install of 98se and am now in the process of installing the drivers for a few devices...... but when you check multimedia properties, there are no options to select the preferred playback device etc. Also when I attempt to check the soundmax mixer... I get an error mentioning unable to init directsound. I've been tinkering with this for hours , anyone have any insight?

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Yup, this is the wonderful wdm trap. Sometimes windows incorrectly installs the drivers badly and its a hellova job to get them straightened out.

Go into safe mode. control panel, add/remove programs, remove soundmax software. Now go into device manager and remove all devices listed under sound.

Shut down
Go into bios and turn off the onboard sound. Boot to normal mode. Check that windows does not start the wizard for sound installation. If it does, you missed something in bios. Go back to bios and look again.

Shut down, go into bios re enable the sound
Boot to normal mode and cancel the sound installation wizard(s). Download the soundmax softpaq from compaq and install it.

Pray.

If you get the same result try the entire procedure again, but with the msi equivalent driver.

Good luck.