No sound card!!

[didikai]

After previous audio problems I now have no sound at all. And my on board Realtk audio card does not show. I get the no sound card message. I updated Windows, reinstalled all drivers, but nothing. Finally went to Add New Hardware. Found the Realtex card, selected it and had a major crash. System is now up and running again but still with no sound.
I also have an exlamation mark against PCI Device under hardware devices.
Is that the problem or how can I check if my sound card is fried.
Many Thanks

[XtremeFuturistic]

TRY THE LATEST DRIVERS. IF THEY DONT WORK, TRY INSTALLIN UR OLDER n USED BEFORE DRIVERS.

OR JUST CHECK UR WIRING etc.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Unfortunately, audio drivers are the most troublesome - usually because of buggy programming by the vendors. This is one of the main reasons that Microsoft have completely revamped the audio side of things in Vista.

When you say it crashed, did you get a blue screen - if so, do you have any information about the crash? Usually, the OS will create a 'mini dump' file that you can use later to find out what was the most likely cause of the crash....

[didikai]

Unfortunately, audio drivers are the most troublesome - usually because of buggy programming by the vendors. This is one of the main reasons that Microsoft have completely revamped the audio side of things in Vista.

When you say it crashed, did you get a blue screen - if so, do you have any information about the crash? Usually, the OS will create a 'mini dump' file that you can use later to find out what was the most likely cause of the crash....

I've got as far as finding the Audio card in devices. It shows as 'unknown'
Every time I try to install the driver I get a blue screen crash. Error message shows as:
RTKHDAUD Sys-ADA5B55E57 Baseat - A5B51000 Datestamp - 4278935e

[kosekjm]

Hi there,

Real long shot, but I had a similar problem when I added a new harddrive. For some strange reason, as soon as I added the Seagate drive tools to my system I had similar (never crashed though) problems as you've described. The only way to get my sound card back was to physically move it (or completely remove the seagate tools which is what I finally did). Again, probably not your problem, but figured I'd throw out that oddity just in case.

Since your card is an onboard, moving slots is out of the question (Unless you're really good with a soldering gun ). When this happened had you recently updated anything else (Different drivers, apps, etc)? Perhaps something else has eaten your sound drivers (As the seagate software did to mine).

kosekjm