Acid for Blood

I can’t get my onboard audio to work. My board is an MSI K8N Neo Series MS-7030 Ver. 1, based on the NVIDIA nForce 3 Chipset. The sound chip is by Realtek. The Realtek AC97 Audio Drivers were installed along with the mainboard drivers.

The Device Manager says that Realtek AC’97 is functioning properly. I had a look at the Audio Codecs (which listed various ones, including stuff like Windows Media Player codecs), and they are all working properly.

My task bar as a little volume icon, and I’ve turned the volume all the way up for everything (Master, Wav, CD, etc.). When I play an MP3 in Media Player, I see the sound indicator moving, and the file is playing all right. MSI included an audio optimisation utility in their CD, which I installed, and I did a sound test.

I plugged the speaker plug into each audio port connector, as the music played, because my friend said that maybe the manufacturer made a mistake and put the Line Out in the wrong coloured port. I plugged the speaker plug into the front audio port as well. I also tried my headset.

I haven’t jumpered my front audio pins because I do want to be able use the front audio header. I made sure that the plugs went into the right pins.

I checked the BIOS for the AC97 Audio, which allows the mainboard to detect whether an audio device is being used. According to the manual, if an audio device is being used, then the onboard Audio Codec 97 controller will be enabled. If I wanted to use a sound card, I’m supposed to Disable this on the BIOS. But since I want to use onboard sound, it was Enabled.

I checked the Realtek website for updated drivers, and downloaded those. I removed the older driver, and installed the most updated version.

I browsed the files on the included driver/utility CD, and there were NVIDIA Audio Codecs there. I tried uninstalling the Realtek Audio, and installing the NVIDIA Audio Codecs.

After all that, I still haven’t got sound.

From doing some research, I have the following options to try:

1. Update the BIOS.

2. Uninstall Windows Service Pack 2. Uninstall the Realtek drivers. Then reinstall Realtek drivers and reinstall Windows Service Pack 2.

3. Fresh installation of Windows XP, nForce drivers, Realtek drivers, and then Windows Service Pack 2.

4. Cry.

For Options 2 and 3, my situation was such that I had installed Windows, then the drivers, then SP2. But over the course of troubleshooting my continual restart problem, the Realtek driver had been uninstalled and then reinstalled, without SP2 being removed. According to one message board, the drivers should all be in place before SP2, which makes sense, of course, and that's what I did. However, I can't be sure whether the sound was working last week, when I had't installed SP2, since my main focus was on keeping the computer from crashing and solving the restart problem.

I think I am going try Option 2 first, then Option 1, then Option 3. If none of that works, I’m going to go for Option 4. What else can I do?