AC97 Sound Problems

[alexlurch]

I have had a lot of trouble getting Windows XP to recognize my on-board VIA AC 97 sound. I can’t get windows to find this hardware through device manager. Here are some specifics that may help: Motherboard is Matsonic MS8127C. BIOS date is 1/18/02, and I’m running Windows XP Home with Service Pack 1. Here’s what I’ve tried so far: In BIOS Advanced Chipset Features, I’ve set ON CHIP SOUND to Auto. In Integrated Peripherals, I’ve both enabled and disabled ONBOARD LEGACY AUDIO and SOUND BLASTER, neither of which made much difference. I’ve also tried Setting PNP OS INSTALLED to both yes and no in the PnP/PCI settings of the BIOS. None of this seems to have helped. I’ve also set the JP4 jumper on the motherboard to the “Use on board codec” position.

Windows does not automatically recognize the hardware. In fact, during startup, between the end of setup and start of Windows beginning to load, there is about 2 minutes of dead time with a blank screen if I set the BIOS to Auto ON CHIP SOUND. Once Windows finally starts, I can manually load the default XP drivers, but once loaded the device is still has an error, and I get no sound. I’ve also tried loading AC 97 drivers I downloaded from the VIA website, and upon installation basically got an error message saying that I needed to enable the AC 97 thru the BIOS first.

Here are some things I’m thinking, I’d appreciate any insight on these or any other thoughts anyone may have:

1. Maybe the motherboard sound is not working (hardware problem). Maybe, but I know it did work once, under Windows ME. At that point, I started using a PCI sound card, but the sound card recently went on the fritz. High quality sound is not super important to me, so I wanted to go back to motherboard sound…

2. Until recently I had a PCTEL HSP56 AMR modem…this stopped working right so I took it out and replaced it with a PCI modem. Could this be related to the problem--are AC 97 audio codecs dependent on the AMR device?

3. I read somewhere that if you try to activate motherboard sound after you have already installed Windows XP, it won’t work. True?

[PardeGT]

You could try the sound driver provided <a href="http://www.matsonic.com/download_via.htm">here</a> by Matsonic.

Make sure all instances of the sound blaster is deleted first.

Also, did you try loading the newest via 4-in-1 drivers?

[grasshopperbe]

Could this be an irq problem? i dont use 2000 myself so i dont really know how well xp does irq settings.

In device manager you can check on each device. Its not too simple though, since some like irq 10 and 11 get shared by 2 to sometimes 3 devices.

For your bios part, check your mobo manual, if you dont have it most manufacturers have these on their site.
you should find in there how to set up sound in your bios correctly

if i remember correctly
ON CHIP SOUND should be set to on
ONBOARD LEGACY AUDIO is for sound in dos games if im not mistakin , so this isn't really important
i dont think the PNP OS INSTALLED setting has anything to do with your audio problem.

[alexlurch]

Thanks, folks. I tried the Matsonic Driver (even though it's windows 2000, not XP). I deleted or uninstalled all sound and video devices. Still no luck. Just updated the 4 in 1 drivers on Saturday. As for the IRQ issue, I never get far enough for windows to recognize the new hardware, so I have no idea whether I have an IRQ conflict or not.

[glc]

Windows 2000 will use ACPI, which will throw everything on one apparent IRQ anyway.

[grasshopperbe]

Well if you know you have the right drivers, and tried several versions, and the hardware still is totally unrecognized, (also, no undetected hardware?)
my guess is it might very well be broken.

Did you check every possibility with your bios settings. One of my older pc's has an ac79 onboard chip too (ecs k7vza or something, duron800) I never had any problems with it, except when i tried disabling it in bios to insert an audigy in it.
Never got any sound from it.

Anyway i seem to remember there are more things to set up for your onboard audio in bios, did you check with the (correct) manual? Your mobo brand isn't sold around here so i totally dont know it.

[alexlurch]

grasshopperbe

I'm starting to think you may be right about the hardware. Sure is frustrating though. The BIOS manual is very sketchy about how to set up on-chip sound. I've e-mailed their tech support but have yet to hear anything. I've taken my best guess, which again is setting on-chip sound to auto. Just wondering if there are any steps to it that I'm missing, or if selecting this in the BIOS is theoretically all there should be to it.

[grasshopperbe]

Well the normal steps for this are check your bios, see in device manager if there's any unrecognized hardware. If yu have the right drivers, and different versions. and still nothing works. im afraid it could be dead.

ill check on my ac97 mobo for the bios setting there. and see if i can find anything you still need to set up.

[bell_kicks]

Ive got the k7vza board which also uses the ac 97 sound, i couldn't get it to work either so i just bought a cheap sound card, solves all the problems!!!