Sound Problem w/HP Pavilion

[Dogwelder]

First of all, sorry for the lack of information - I didn't have much to spend with the problem computer. This is basically a fishing expedition to (hopefully) give me an idea of what direction to look in.

Anyway, a friend has one of the latest HP Pavilions (running XP) he bought last year. About two weeks after he bought it, he lost the sound. Now, because the machine boots up so slowly, I was able to open the Sound Control Panel by double clicking the sound icon during startup. I got sound for a little while by moving the volume slider, but after a while, no more sound.

He thought it occurred after he installed Freedom Firewall, so we unistalled it, but no dice.

I also tried disabling digital audio for the CD player, but that didn't work either.

I know it's some program or driver that loads at startup, but I don't know where to look. Anybody have any ideas?

Dogwelder

[Redo40]

The first thing I would do is go to HP's site and see if they have an updated sound driver. It may very well be a program that is causing this, but sometimes an updated driver can resolve it.

[Dogwelder]

Ok. First of all, there's no update from HP.

After more digging around I discovered the speakers are plugged into a sound card which seems to be slotted in a PCI slot. (Haven't opened her up to check yet). It also has onboard sound (Speaker/Line In/Mic ports located up by the mouse and keyboard connectors.) HP reccomended going in to the BIOS and disabling the onboard sound, which I did.

When I rebooted, no sound, no volume controls, no device. So I plugged the speakers into the onboard sound, enabled it in BIOS and started up. Still nothing.

A couple of notes: I can still get a "ding" when moving the volume slider bar around directly after startup. Once I've opened up the Control Panels window from the Start Bar, it's gone.

However, if I move the volume slider real fast up and down and listen carefully, it produces a kind of quiet crackling through the speakers.

I'm going to see if I have a soundcard lying around to put in the comp and see how that does, but I'd be real interested to hear anyone's opinions on this.

Dogwelder

[Dogwelder]

Okay, well that didn't work.

Opened up the PC, put in a Creative SB, turned off onboard audio in the BIOS. Windows installed it without a hitch, but all I got was very loud static instead of regular sounds (the static would last as long as whatever sound was being played.)

When I opened up the PC, I found out it doesn't have a regular-type soundcard, it's just an interface which connects to a cable that runs into the motherboard. What's that all about?

Would dearly love some help on this.

Dogwelder

[newme]

did you try removing sound from device manager and reinstall the original drivers

[eldon]

A few years ago I had the same problem,and I think it was one of the music players we had installed that kept muting the sound,(musicmatch I think)may want to check any of those players and see if they are interfering with your system.