Windows XP No sound.

[Unregistered]

Alright, i have had this issue for some time now and its currently getting unbearable.
Motherboard: M2N-MX SE

AMD Athlon... i don't think this is relevant, but anyway -
i tried my friends sound card, installed his drivers and my speakers work 100%.

BEFORE i did that, i installed ALL my chipset CD's and my in-built sound driver.
Although, the sound did NOT work. im running SP3 and did ALL the windows updates

Yet, no sound > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio > No Devices
i Also tried Control Panel > Add Hardware > nothing, No yellow "?" nothing at all. I install my sound driver, it says its installed, i re-boot, and then it says its not installed. what the heck!

could anyone help me out? X_X

[alwalker]

Hello,
I went to Asus's website and looked up the drivers page for your motherboard (http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M2N-MX%20SE). After choosing what operating system you have, the Asus website will list the most recent software updates. If you click "AUDIO," you'll see the most recent audio driver for your motherboard, and you can download it for free. A lot of times, updating the drivers is all you need to do to make things work.

How to update drivers correctly in Windows XP:
Right click on "My Computer"
Click "Properties"
Select the "Hardware" tab.
Click "Device Manager." This is a list of all the installed devices on your machine.
Click the [+] sign next to "Sound, video and game controllers."
Look for the word "Realtek" under the results that appear. This will be your sound driver. It's possible that you'll get more than one Realtek result here. All "Realtek" devices are probably audio devices. If you see some other thing listed as an "audio device" or something like that, they're probably audio devices, too. However, Codecs are not audio devices, so ignore them.
IF you see the "Realtek" device, right click on it and click "Uninstall." If you see other things listed as "Audio Devices," right click them and uninstall them too. If you didn't see any audio devices, skip to the next step. Generally, if you uninstall something and you shouldn't have, Windows will reinstall it. Since the Audio devices are giving you problems, you won't be any worse for wear if you uninstall anything listed as an audio device.
Next, extract the Realtek driver you downloaded from your motherboard's driver page (http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M2N-MX%20SE). Open the extracted folder up and go to Audio->RLC->Driver. Run "Setup.exe" and go through the install process. Restart your computer. With any luck, this will fix your problem.

If this doesn't work, you may have a bad audio chip on your motherboard. Since you've had luck with sound cards before, you may want to buy a cheap one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010360057&bop=And&Order=PRICE). They start at around $10, and unless you have really high-end speakers, it probably won't matter which one you get. You'll generally get as good (if not better) sound quality off a sound card than you do with onboard audio, and it'll also tax your system less (the sound card will be dealing with audio rather than your CPU, which makes a surprising difference). I've personally owned the Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach brands, and they're good cards.

Hope this helps!
-Aaron

[Unregistered]

Thanks for your response Aaron >.< i installed the updated driver... "open exe, next next, install etc."

But the driver says its installed, i restart my computer... and nothing X_X it then says theres no sound driver installed. The driver i installed by your link IS the correct one, and is the latest for my motherboard. i assume somthing is wrong with my audio chip, but everything was fine untill i re-formatted my whole pc *sigh* i even tried resetting the CMOS.

if you could help me further, it would be appreciated, if not.. then i'll have to buy that sound card :P

Thankyou for your time!!

<3

[alwalker]

If this just happened after you reformatted, it's likely that something went buggy in the reformatting process. It's hard to pinpoint the exact problem without seeing it personally, so I don't really know what to recommend. You may want to physically take your system to a tech person (http://the247.arizona.edu/ is a great, free tech service that OSCR provides if you're at the University of Arizona), and it's likely that they'll be able to diagnose and fix whatever's wrong relatively quickly, if it's fixable.
The easiest (and cheapest) thing to do may be to get a new sound card, if you can't take it to a free tech support. The most absolute way to fix the problem without paying anything may be to reformat your system again.
I don't really have anything else to go on, since I can't see the problem first hand, so I'm going to leave you with those options. You may want to check back here, though, as there are other people who may know more about this problem than I do.
Best of luck!
Aaron

Oh--If you do reformat again, install the newest motherboard chipset drivers there are on Asus's website, then promptly get your audio device working (install drivers for it if they're not bundled in with the chipset drivers), then install graphics, and LASTLY (after you have all your devices installed) you can install your programs. If I had to break it down in a sentence, that's the safest way to reformat a computer without running into any major problems.