No Sound At All

[girl-aflame]

No Sound At All: UPDATED, Please Read

My boyfriend's computer (Gateway 500S win XP) doesn't have sound on it, even though the drivers seem to be installed. When I open a Mp3 file in Winamp it says "Bad Directsound driver, please install proper sound devices or choose another configuration"

In the device manager these are listed:
Unimodem Half-duplex audio device
Audio Codecs (location unknown, it says)
Legacy audio drivers (location unknown)
Media control devices (location unknown)
Legacy video controllers (location unknown)
Video codecs (location unknown)

Does this location unknown message indicate that the drivers are missing? I looked at my chipset using Everest software and went to Intel to get a new sound driver. They had me download a SoundMax software. But when I installed it said "no driver found, please reboot and run this setup again" After reboot I got the same message.

So how can I fix this? I would think if I could find the right driver I could just download a new one but I am not sure what driver to look for.

 

[G9]

I have no clue. You'll first have to find out what the sound card is, then look up drivers for it. Download PC Wizard 2006, and finding out what the sound card is will be easy from there.

 

[freestyler105]

It sounds like there is something wrong with the drivers. I had a similar problem after reinstalling XP, and I was missing some drivers for my motherboard's chipset. It would help if you gave us the models of the motherboard and the sound card (if it's not integrated).

 

[girl-aflame]

Ok here's an update:

The mainboard says it is Intel D845PT with chipset Intel i845D. Also under the mainboard it says there is a Device :Intel ICH2 Audio Device (Sound). Under Multimedia it says Device Audio :EMU10K1 Audio Chipset (SB Live!).

He now has sound again (it was mysteriously restored), but he cannot install a microphone, either through a USB port or the mic jack in his computer. The computer simply doesn't reocgnize it. When trying to install the USB mic it didn't recognize it as a sound device but said it couldn't install the hardware because it couldn't find the software.

I also tried to use a flash drive to transfer files and it again said it couldn't find the software to install it, even though it did recognize it as a flash storage device. However it didn't create the F directory in my computer.

Is there any other way to fix this besides reinstalling windows? If we reinstalled windows with service pack 2 on it, would it have drivers installed or would we have to get them from Gateway?

 

[Ð88]

Have you ran a windows update? Make sure it is fully up to date.

 

[girl-aflame]

Yes windows update is fully up to date.

 

[Raffaz]

Is there anything else missing in device manager?

 

[dedb33t]

Hmmm check your BIOS, This has happened to me. I had a soundcard and a intergrated sound on the mobo, There was a conflict cuz they were both turned on. So make sure one of them is disabled, And enable all the USB ports.

 

[girl-aflame]

In case anyone else has this problem, it may just be that your default audio playback is not set to your soundcard. This was the case for us.

Go to control panel, sounds and audio devices, and in the audio tab make sure the drop down menu has your sound card selected (our was set to the modem for some reason) for both playback and recording.

Simple fix that fortunately did not require us to find new drivers