Tech Support Guy banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Solved: No audio output device is installed - "Sound, video, game controllers" option

11K views 3 replies 2 participants last post by  MartyNg 
#1 ·
I have a Gateway GT5628 Core 2 Quad desktop. Vista Home Premium. It has on-board sound (which is enabled in the BIOS), and worked fine for the month I've had the machine until a couple of days ago. We had a power outage, and when the system came back up, I had a speaker icon in the system tray with a red X saying "No Audio output device is installed".

The system does not seem to realize that a sound card exists. It no longer shows up in device manager. Also, "Sound, video, and game controllers" is not showing as a category in device manager...was this removed in Vista, or is this part of my problem?

I talked to support at Gateway, and they told me to reinstall the drivers. As I expected, the drivers won't install because "Audio device not found". They then told me to do a Factory Recovery.....no thanks. I've spent too many hours tweaking this thing! Do you folks think a Factory recovery would do anything? To me this seems like a hardware problem. If the machine can't see the sound card now, it's not going to see it with a recovery either, right?

Plus, I already ran System Recovery once! The system blue-screened like crazy when I first got it. After installing all my software, I realized that SP1 was not installed. It would not install no matter what. I had to do a factory recovery, then install SP1, then re-install all my software!

FYI - I have the newest system BIOS installed.

Thank you for any tips!
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Sounds like the power outage did something not so nice to your PC (investing in a UPS is a good thing). It sounds to me like some sort of hardware issue at this point.

I would recommend opening the case up and seeing if any of the capacitors (little can like things) on the motherboard look like they are distended (look like they are bulging out or exploded), also do a sniff test and see if anything smells funny.
 
#3 ·
Sounds like the power outage did something not so nice to your PC (investing in a UPS is a good thing). It sounds to me like some sort of hardware issue at this point.

I would recommend opening the case up and seeing if any of the capacitors (little can like things) on the motherboard look like they are distended (look like they are bulging out or exploded), also do a sniff test and see if anything smells funny.
I have a surge suppressor, but no UPS. I'll take a closer look at the motherboard. I'm still confused about "Sound, video, and game controllers" not showing in Device Manager. Shouldn't it be there?

Thanks!
 
#4 ·
ISSUE FIXED! Hooray!

I went to Gateway's chat support hoping to find a more knowledgeable technician and got one! Instead of pointing me to Gateway's drivers for the sound card, he suggested I try the drivers directly from Intel's site.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...OSs=164&OSFullName=Windows Vista* 32&lang=eng

The Realtek audio drivers from there installed successfully and the sound worked properly after a reboot. My "sound, video, and game controllers" is now showing up.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top