No PC sound

[[email protected]]

I've been almost a month without sound on my computer. It started in
December when I moved my computer and installed a second CD-Rom drive.
Up to this point everything was working perfectly. I have Windows XP
SP2. My soundcard is a SoundBlaster Live! card. I got some help from a
tech support site last month, and we tried pretty much everything
before finally coming to the conclusion that the card was bad. I've
since purchased a brand new (NOS) SoundBlaster Live! audio card which
I installed over the weekend. I still can't get any sound from my
computer! I have installed, uninstalled and reinstalled the latest
driver AND patch several times to no avail. I've also tried moving the
card to a different slot, but nothing seems to be working. What's
more, when I activate my onboard audio through bios IT isn't producing
any sound either. I've gone to "Device Manager" and checked the
"properties" for my hardware and drivers and it says that everything
is working properly. Here's the message that pops up when I enable or
disable my Soundblaster card:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/Deviceinstallererror-1.png?t=1231193031
I'm at my wits end. What else could be causing my computer to not have
any sound?
Bryan

[[email protected]]

Thanks Bob.
Tonight I downloaded and ran the installer cleanup utility
(msicuu2.exe) and reinstalled the drivers for my soundcard with the
antivirus disabled. At least now I'm no longer getting this message:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/Deviceinstallererror-1.png?t=1231193031
But it didn't solve the problem either. Still no sound. I plugged my
microphone into the back of the soundcard and recorded it with
Audacity. There IS sound going in. In fact, I played an MP3 and hit
the record button (in Audacity) and it's showing soundwaves there too!
I'm just not hearing it. If I turn the volume ALL the way up, I can
just barely make out some faint sounds if I put my ear on the speaker.
All the connections were checked and the speakers are working fine.
This is clearly a software issue.
I need to install this driver on my father's computer too. He had XP
reinstalled yesterday and has the same SoundBlaster Live! card in his
pc. Unfortunately his computer still isn't working correctly. But as
soon as it gets back from the repair shop, I'm going to head over
there and see what files he has, that I could possibly be missing on
mine (or maybe I have them, but they're corrupted). I'm not sure
exactly what I should be looking for yet.
Bryan

[[email protected]]

This is unbelievable. At the risk of looking like a total moron, I
thought I'd share with you how I managed to fix the problem. I went to
my father's to see why his SoundBlaster card is working and mine
isn't. It turned out to be something really minor. His speakers were
plugged into the green jack (A), I was plugging mine into the blue one
(B) SEE PICTURE:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/Soundcard.png?t=1231445495
It never occurred to me to use the green jack because since building
this computer in January 2008, I have ALWAYS used the blue one for my
speakers! I have no idea what the hell happened, I'm just glad to
finally have sound again.
Bryan

[polymod]

> wrote in message
...
> This is unbelievable. At the risk of looking like a total moron, I
> thought I'd share with you how I managed to fix the problem. I went to
> my father's to see why his SoundBlaster card is working and mine
> isn't. It turned out to be something really minor. His speakers were
> plugged into the green jack (A), I was plugging mine into the blue one
> (B) SEE PICTURE:
> http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/Soundcard.png?t=1231445495
> It never occurred to me to use the green jack because since building
> this computer in January 2008, I have ALWAYS used the blue one for my
> speakers! I have no idea what the hell happened, I'm just glad to
> finally have sound again.

Doh!
Being a color-blind person, I always read the writing under the jacks ;)

Poly

[Richard Crowley]

> wrote ...
> This is unbelievable. At the risk of looking like a total moron, I
> thought I'd share with you how I managed to fix the problem. I went to
> my father's to see why his SoundBlaster card is working and mine
> isn't. It turned out to be something really minor. His speakers were
> plugged into the green jack (A), I was plugging mine into the blue one
> (B) SEE PICTURE:
> http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/Soundcard.png?t=1231445495
> It never occurred to me to use the green jack because since building
> this computer in January 2008, I have ALWAYS used the blue one for my
> speakers! I have no idea what the hell happened, I'm just glad to
> finally have sound again.

Some of the consumer sound cards have dynamic "auto-sense" where
you can plug into almost ANY jack and it will either figure out what
you want, or it will pop up a window and ask you.

I find those kinds of automatic things (like "plug-n-pray") to be very
annoying. I have a sound card in a system here in the office that is
always going mute, and then I have to take the box out and unplug
and then re-plug the connector to get the pop-up window to show
so I can tell it AGAIN that I yes, I want the conventional line output
on the green jack. There is apparently no way of turning OFF this
stupid "automatic" behavior.

And you have discovered annother downside to this automatic behavior:
It trains the user to think that it doesn't matter where you plug something.