I've seen a few odd ones, but this baffles me

[Hasufin]

First off, my apologies. This is going to be a pretty long post. Having only the vaguest of theories on the cause, I'm giving pretty much all the data I have.

Just last week, I replaced my old eopx mobo and AMD K6-2 for a new ASUS A7V133 and a 900 mHz AMD Duron. I also upgraded the RAM to 512 MB. Aside from that,t he hardware is all stuff that was fully functional in my old box: Diamond Viper V550 video card, AOpen AON-315 NIC, Diamond MX300 Sound card, and old 10 gig HD and 36X CD-ROM on the primary IDE controller, and a 20 gig Seagate on the Ultra ATA controller. The system is running Win98.

In order to free up a few resources and resolve some conflicts, I disabled the COM2 port and set the IDE controller to use the primary IDE channel only. (Before I did that last change, it wouldn't see the CD-ROM - which is the primary slave - in windows)

That, however, isn't the problem. The problem is thus: no sound. Windows says its all working properly, I have the most recent driver for the card, but no sound. /Except/... when the movie on this site is playing: http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/base.swf

Seriously. When the movie was playing, I got sound on my other apps. When the movie ended, no sound for me. Just tested, though, and now I don't get any sound when the movie is playing. Guess that's a fluke.

Anyway. I'm not getting any error that the sound hardware isn't available, and I've checked the connections with the speakers. Anyone have any idea what the problem might be?

[Mord-Sith]

restart your computer into safe mode and check to see if there are any unknown devices. Specificaly unknown audio devices. delete them if there are and also delete your detected audio devices. Then restart. This will probably help. Im a computer tech at a place that lets the customer buy bare bones computers without os's and I get this same thing all the time. If you just install the drivers alot of times windows wont recognise that the drivers you just installed are for the unknown device or the unknown device disapears but is realy still there, thats why you have to boot into safemode.


Boot into safe mode by hitting f5 when you see the "verifying dmi pool" line on startup

[redduc900]

Have you tried the card in a different PCI slot? If your board has the optional AC '97 sound integrated on the board, make sure it's disabled by way of the onboard jumper...and also in the BIOS.

[Billvill]

This is going to sound too simple but , have you checked the speaker cord ? I recently had a no sound problem on a machine and looked everywhere but there. The cords are micro thin and if they have been streached or moved a lot it is easy for them to open near the plug. It is easy to plug in another pair of cheap speakersand check this theary.

Hope this helps, Billy

[Hasufin]

*sigh*
Apparently, the definition of "without onboard sound" means they took out the jack. The codec was still messing up my audio. But changing the jumper and the BIOS (and reinstalling the drivers) fixed the problem.

Thanks greatly, reduc990.

[Hasufin]

Disabling the built-in audio helped some - I get sound sometimes now, but it crashes when I try to play an mpeg (though not an mp3!) and sometimes when I restart it gives me "Windows protectioin error. You need to restart your computer" until I go into safe mode, remove the sound card drivers, and reinstall the drivers again.

And yes, I've checked the cables. Repeatedly. And messed up cables can't cause a software-based deterministic problem.

[redduc900]

Have you tried moving the card to different PCI slots, or setting the IRQ manually instead of "Auto" in the BIOS (for that particular PCI slot)? The IRQ settings in the BIOS are usually under "PnP/PCI Configurations".

[Hasufin]

Tried moving to a different PCI slot, to no avail.
Also set the IRQ manually, but this doesn't make any difference anyhow - this sound card thinks itsef to be some four devices (Monster Sound II Multifunction Parent, Monster Sound II Gameport, Monster Sound II MPU-401, Monster Sound II PCI Audio, And Monster Sound II Soundblaster Pro Emulation) of which the parent and the PCI audio both use one IRQ, and the Sound Blaster Pro emulation uses another IRQ.

I tried setting the IRQ manually, anyway, but it doesn't change anything, except which IRQ the parent and the PCI audio uses. It still crashes (well, hangs) on MPEGs.

[redduc900]

The only other thing I can think of right now, to help you with getting this solved...is to suggest you read through the Asus MB forum at Amdmb...

http://www.amdmb.com/vb/index.php

I just read through 10 pages (about 150 posts), and I'd say that there were probably 30-50 posts regarding sound card problems with this board and the A7A...might be of some help to you.

[Pinky]

www.takeoffeveryzig.com

[Hasufin]

Still looking on the Amdmb forums. Thanks for pointing me to it, redduc900

Pinky - that URL isn't resolving. What is it?

[Pinky]

What you say?

For great justice.

[Hasufin]

Really. I knew someone would go to the site and assume I was joking, but I'm afraid I wasn't.

My *guess* (knowing very little about the design of Windows, but assuming it's just as "original" as everythign else that comes from Microsoft) is that that movie opens a socket to the sound card in a different way than most apps, and that particular movie has no sound. Thusly, there's an open socket to the sound card, allowing the other apps access to the device. Says something about the security of the OS, no?

However, disabling the onboard sound seems to have fixed /that/ problem. Which still leaves me with the hanging on mpegs.

[Ridenow]

See? I told you that you would get some good replys here.

[Hasufin]

I've hunted on the amdmb forum, but thus far not found anything there. Going to continue to look there, but if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

The problem is still thus - the computer is guaranteed to lock up on mpegs, and does so infrequently while playing other sounds. If I shut off sound, it seems to be quite stable.