[AnTi90d]

My friend's father gave me his old business computer, which has no sound.. I believe it is missing a driver.. (I hope that is all that is wrong.) The motherboard has integrated audio, I believe.. so it shouldn't be too difficult to get the sound to work, right?.. I've been working at it on and off for a few weeks and haven't really gotten anywhere. The C:/cabs files don't seem to have any drivers for the sound, nor have I been able to find the drivers anywhere else in the system. I have tried several ac'97 audio codecs from websites that were supposed to be for my board, but didn't work. The device manager said that the device was working properly, but when I go to control panel / multimedia, there is no device listed for audio playback. I would greatly appreciate any help and assistence that any of you may be able to give. Here is the readout that Everest gave about my system, if that helps:

Operating System Microsoft Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222A (Win98 SE)
CPU Type Intel Pentium II, 450 MHz (4.5 x 100)
Motherboard Name Biostar M6TWG (3 PCI, 1 AMR, 2 DIMM, Audio, Video)
Motherboard Chipset Intel Whitney i810
System Memory 160 MB (SDRAM)
BIOS Type Award Modular (03/08/00)
Audio Adapter Intel 82801AA I/O Controller Hub - AC'97 Audio Adapter [B-1]

[Blackmirror]

Check your settings by going to Start, Control Panel. Choose "Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices" and then choose "Sound and Audio Devices." Click the "Audio" tab in the popup window,
see whats listed there please

[AnTi90d]

Hmm.. I don't have an icon by that specific name in my control panel.. I have a Multimedia one.. Is that the correct one to look in?.. In the Audio tab it has Playback devices greyed out.. with "no playback devices" in the box.. In the Midi tab it has Roland MPU-401.. In the Devices tab it has listed: Multimedia Drivers- Audio Devices, but there isn't anything under that.. Midi Devices and Instruments has a file in it, Media Control Devices has files in it, Video and Audio Compression Codecs have files in them.

[flavallee]

Maybe this will help.

http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/ac97.html

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[Old Bob]

AnTi90d,

Just curious, do you have "jacks" to plug in speakers ???

This would confirm mobo has built-in sound.

[AnTi90d]

OK, I finally found a driver that makes sound come out of my speakers!.. (Yay!) . . . BUT, now my Windows Media Player 9 freezes when I try to play something.. and I have tried reinstalling it.. I don't think it likes the driver that is running my audio.. When I go to options in WMP and go to devices and click on speakers it freezes the whole computer..

The driver that I found is an Avance AC'97 Audio for Intel(R) Audio Controller.. that has another branch in the device manager that says Avance SB Emulation.. (None of the other drivers that I have tried have had the SB emulation branch off of their line in the device manager.)

(Oh, and.. yes, I have the three audio jacks on the back of my cpu.)

Does anyone know what I could do about WMP?

[Old Bob]

AnTi90d,

I would say you are "close" on the drive, but might not have the "exact" version. Maybe somebody could post an extensive driver source. I'll check my favorites.

Re jacks - a friend gave me an NEC tower that had been part of an office LAN. I had to add a sound card and a modem to make it a desktop computer.

Minor point - A "CPU" is a silicon chip, the metal box that houses all your computer parts is call a "tower".

[AnTi90d]

OK.. I used an Avance AC'97 audio driver package (The 95 drivers worked.. but, not the 98 ones from the same folder.. That seemed odd to me.) from driverguide.com that worked on web audio, Windows program sounds, and DOS programs.. (I use ZSNES DOS version.. as it was the only emulator that I was able to run.. The others would install, but would freeze the system when I tried to run them..) I ran the DirectX diagnostics, believing it to be a Direct Sound issue, and the diagnostic program froze the system.. I downloaded Everest, and everything seems OK with DirectX.. except when I click the Direct Sound or Music tab, it displays a blank screen..

So, I figured that it must be that the integrated audio device lacked the exact driver that it needed, so I decided to get a PCI sound card. I bought a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (sb0100) from eBay.. I disabled the integrated audio from the Multimedia program in the Control Panel.. installed the card and drivers.. and, although the audio for my SNES games and Windows sounds is cleaner and has a better overall quality.. It did nothing to fix my Direct Sound issue..

So... I downloaded a DirectX removal utility (DirectX Buster) and a registry cleaner (CCleaner) and wiped away DirectX and reinstalled it with version 8.0.. and STILL absolutely nothing has changed.. I used the System Information tool in accessories to check all of my Windows files.. Bah.. I am quite agitated with this predicament.

Does anyone have any advice for this situation?.. and, thank you for the time that you took to read my lengthy reply.

[AnTi90d]

I am going to start a new topic.. The origional problem was.. kind of.. solved.. I guess.. in a way..