Any help on computer speakers?

Question

Hi there. I recently had my hard drive croak over(my friend was tinkering around with my computer since he was testing parts for his computer he was building. Anyways it ended with my computer not seeing my hard drive so he got different ones and let me have them. Got a different hard drive to use and got a fresh coughcrackedcough Windows installation on it so everything runs nice and fast and yea. But now my speakers don't work.

My friend and I couldn't really figure out what's wrong, I've been Googling around all night but still can't seem to get them to work. There is a lot of funky stuff going on too but if any of you are really computer savvy I could use the help.

Here is basically what's going on. We got the fresh Windows, went and I think updated my graphics driver and got Flash and all that. But when I went to Youtube to test if my video was working, I wasn't getting sound. My friend said that's because I don't have the drivers for that. So after some looking around we tried installing this Realtek AC97 sound driver(the kind my motherboard apparently needs) but kept getting this message saying hey we dunno if this will work for this version of Windows do you want to try installing anyway? and we say yes. It gets an error and fails.

My friend looked around inside my case, and said that my sound card is integrated onto my motherboard. Don't know if that helps.

I don't even have Volume Control from my start button. It says I don't have a sound mixer and that I need to go to the Control Panel and then Add Hardware, but when I go there, there's nothing to do. It has a list of a bunch of things, the sound ones having names like Legacy or whatever, but it says they're all working. The AC97 is there and I can try to install it again, but it just leaves me with that same error.

I'm glad I've got a working computer again and all, but not having sound kind of... sucks.

Answer 1

It looks like your computer is not detecting the sound card. Open your computer, remove the sound card. Move the sound card to another available PCI slot (based on your question, it is likely a PCI sound card). Turn on the computer and let Windows auto detect the sound card. If Windows can detect the sound card, it will automatically install the generic drivers for it. Otherwise, install the original sound driver for this sound card.



Last resort if it still does not work-- try re-install windows again and may sure that it installs correctly or get another sound card, it's very cheap.





Good luck.

Answer 2

Hi,



You can use various applications to determine what sound card you have. If you need one, you can find one such example here ->http://tnthelpforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1408



The PC-Inspector is the one you need. Scan it for viruses first (as you should with any downloaded file) then open and run it.



If it lists your sound card, grab the driver for that (simple search will give you many links).



If it doesn't list your sound card, search using your mother board information and add the words sound driver integrated or something similar and you should find what you're looking for.



If not, let us know what motherboard you have and we'll try and find the driver for you.

Answer 3

Yes, you need to get the drivers from your onboard audio from the motherboard manufacturers' website and install them. If you want a far better sound than you could ever get from onboard audio though, you could install a separate soundcard in a spare PCI slot on your motherboard.

Answer 4

Ok your sound card is part of the mobo so go to the mobo manufacturers website and download the drivers from there.