No sound card on laptop anymore, but there physically is one!

[Rudyard]

My sister gave my borther an old laptop to do basic stuff.

I reinstalled XP from scratch since it was old and running crappy, fresh start so to speak.

However now there is no sound and it says there is no sound card/device.

There is actually the standard onboard sound card as my sister used to have sound no worries.

I am just at a bit of a loss as to how to get it to recognise this. I tried the BIOS incase there was a way to turn on onboard cards but cant find it.

Where do I start to try and get this working?

Thanks.

[johns0]

Goto the laptop website and lookup the model number and go to the download/driver section and get the audio drivers and download and install them.

[Rudyard]

thanks but it was from a local shop that no longer exists, not a dell or hp etc.

I have another computer from that store, ill see what drivers that uses and try that.

So you install drivers for hardware that is not even recognised?

[zoobie]

the short answer is yes
drivers are very specific...get a program to find out what make/model your onboard sound card or mobo is like Everest then head over to their site for the drivers

[johns0]

Whats the name of the laptop?the local store sold it,doubt they assembled it.

[Rudyard]

no this mob actually did assemble them, its in a no name case, they used to put things together for you with whatever specs you wanted.

Ill see what I can find driver wise going from the other laptop from there.

Going by memory it is a ?? AC97 or something to that effect.

[Bjs]

Never seen of a no brand laptop.

If the device is active and without drivers it should show up in the control panel > system > hardware > device manager.

Only two things will prevent it from listing with ? ... 1: Hardware onboard is disabled or damaged ... 2: Motherboards driver package not installed (ie, system using idiot microsofts xp default device drivers).

The motherboard will have model number which you can lookup on google but some disassembly is required.

Yes ... Ac97 ... which package ? ... and there was also a 7.1 audio output special chipset released ... stupid hp made a few systems with that.

[Nelson37]

The realtek AC97 sound chip is so common that you have very high odds that dirver set will work. Just download a few variations and go for it. Unless you requested some hi-end sound that is almost certainly what you have.

I am surprised you find no mention of this in the BIOS, or were you unable to get into BIOS at all? There are also usually some clues about motherboard type in there, also on-screen at boot time. You have to watch carefully, sometimes tab out of the advertising splash screen, also sometimes use the pause key to read the displayed information.

[Rudyard]

Just for the record, I d/l the XP drivers from realtek and it kept crashing the PC (reboot) about 70% the way through installation.

Had an old external audio interface that runs off USB, runs the sound and is working using that as a work around.

Thanks for all the help.