Built in Sound Card.... helllppppp!

[Eos of the Eons]

Hi there,

we have a sound card from crystal sound fusion built into our computer's motherboard. We had been trying to get a microphone working, and my husband somehow managed to get the computer to no longer recognize it has a sound card. I can't even get it working by "installing new hardware" or anything.

How do I get this infernal machine to recognize that it has the soundcard again?

Thank you,

Eos

[Batman Jr.]

Downloading and reinstalling the sound drivers for your particular chipset is the first thing you ought to try.

[Batman Jr.]

Here is a list of Crystal Lake sound card drivers (http://www.driverfiles.net/page,level2,121,7,resultpage1.html)

They seem to be out of business. I can't find their website.

[Zep]

What version OS are you trying to run on this PC? With luck, it should be fairly easy to restore full working functionality...

And why did you let what is obviously an incompetent "monster from the inky blackness" play with the dern thing anyway? :D

[a_unique_person]

If you had dropped it around to my place, I could have fixed it for free.

I would check the BIOS has it defined still. You can make it appear that the built in devices don't exist, in case you supply your own, better ones.

[Eos of the Eons]

:D The restore disk did the trick, I couldn't find it before hiding in plain site amongs our zillion discs for games. I don't think my mic is going to work on the computer. It seemed to at work darn it! We downloaded some drivers, but the drivers were all sitting there, just looking dumb and not helping at all.

Do you think I just need another driver to make the mic work? My creature from the inky blackness :p doesn't think it will help.


After using the restore disk, my hubby didn't notice I had unplugged the speakers...um, he couldn't figure out why he had no sound, and got really peaved when he finally discovered the speakers unplugged...:D I got a bit of a "don't unplug things!" Heh, oops.

[jimlintott]

One very common, and easily overlooked problem, with a mic not working is that it is turned down or muted on the mixer. Double click the little speaker icon in the system tray and check.

If you have already checked the mixer, disregard this advice. ;)

[Eos of the Eons]

Yeah, it's been muted, unmuted, muted again for trying with Paltalk, etc. Nothing works. Tried installing new hardware and the computer tells me I have no new hardware. Darn thing is plugged into the microphone jack on the computer right by the speaker jack. The speakers work fine. I even told the darn thing to "use any available device" under the mulitmedia for recording devices on the control panel.

It worked on the work computer. I don't know what the heck is up with this thing at home here. ***snarl***

[Zep]

Go to the previous model...

http://school.discovery.com/clipart/images/tin-tele.gif

[scribble]

Originally posted by Eos of the Eons
It worked on the work computer. I don't know what the heck is up with this thing at home here. ***snarl*** [/B]

Integrated motherboards are generally shunned by people in the industry - integrated sound gives you exactly what you paid for it, more often than not.

That said, for some integrated mobos, there is an enable/disable setting in the BIOS which may help you.

My adivce, forget about that and go buy a Soundblaster.

[Zep]

General plan of attack:

1. Check that the BIOS has the onboard sound card ENABLED.

2. Check that it is not emulating some other soundcard. If it is, you need to treat it like the emulated model, not the actual model. (This seems to be less common with newer mobos)

3. Check your OS supports the soundcard. Win2K and XP have a good range of soundcard support right in the kit (XP more so). Otherwise you will need to hunt down the "correct" drivers and other paraphenalia for it. Try the manufacturer's site, and/or www.driverguide.com, to start.

4. Positively definitely REMOVE the soundcard from the OS - hardware uninstall option.

5. Shutdown and reboot the PC (power off REQUIRED - it will initialise the mobo properly).

6. Hope-and-pray that (i) the OS recognises the card properly, and (ii) you do the right thing in the right order to reinstall the drivers.

7. An alternative to 4, 5 and 6 may be to run some "special install software" to install the drivers and stuff. A crock, but sometimes the only way.

8. Check the audio setup on your OS - you SHOULD be able to enable and test the mic via the control panel.

9. Of course, if you are not running Windows, then IGNORE ALL THIS! You will need to go to your local shaman instead for anything else! :)

[Uh_Clem]

I really hate to say it but I take a pretty lazy approach to troubleshooting integrated sound cards. I'll give it a good hours worth of investigation, after that I'll take a ten minute drive down to Circuit City and buy a $25 pci Sound Blaster card.

[richardm]

One thing to check is that you've definitely plugged the microphone into a microphone socket. Some sound cards have numerous input/output sockets, often with cryptic little pictures next to them. It's quite easy to plug something into the wrong socket by mistake.

[Eos of the Eons]

Our sockets are color coded with the actual words too, you'd have to be a two year old to not get the right ones:D

We chucked the mic and bought another one. Then I rambled on Paltalk with my real voice for the very first time!!

We're also getting a new computer :D Yep, all our problems are solved by replacing the technology we had on hand.

Thank you for your help, I will be accessing this thread the next time I need to do some troubleshooting.

Much appreciated,

Eos

[a_unique_person]

There is no computer problem that can't be solved if you throw enough money at it.