Computer help? XP no sound, no audio device detected

[Chasaway]

Okay…I give up. I’ve got to ask for some help. Freepers have given me great advice on holsters, guns, etc., but now I need computer help.

I recently re-installed XP Media Center on my Dell Dimension E310. Now, whenever I re-start I have no sound. And when I go the Control Panel, I get the “No Audio Device” with all of the selections grayed-out. And I mean all of them: The Volume section, the Sounds section, the Audio section…all of them. When I troubleshoot the hardware it says the device is working properly.

I’ve searched the web (and lots of techie sites!) and have noticed this same problem reported by many others. And I’m pretty sure I’ve tried all the solutions presented. Either I’m a dope (real possibility there), or something’s wack.

I’ve reloaded the correct motherboard drivers, the video drivers and the sound card (SigmaTel, onboard) drivers, from both the Dell site and from the individual manufacturer sites. I’ve un-installed and installed again. Everything. In the correct order. I’ve re-installed XP Media Center and even re-installed just plain ole XP Pro, trying to figger this out. I’ve gone through the PNP Device Enumerator “solution”.

I’ve gone to the “services” and made sure the Windows Audio is set to “Automatic” and is started. I’ve stopped it, rebooted and re-started it and re-booted it.

I’ve read and read and read and then tried and tried and tried potential solutions, but it keeps being a bad, bad, misbehaving system. I’ve used both Belarc and Everest Home Edition. When the sound’s not working, neither one even see my sound card. When it’s working, they see it. These programs are how I know it’s a Sigmatel card and how I know my motherboard manufacturer, for the correct drivers.

Periodically, the sound will come on and everything will work perfectly. The machine is fast, the sound is great and nothing seems wrong at all. I will set a restore point at that time, place and configuration. When the sound “fails” again, I go back to the restore point and…no sound.

I can log off and re-logon and it’ll be fine. BUT…if I re-start, it comes back up with the no sound, no device thing I described above.

When I look in the Device Manager, the only yellow question mark I get is the “PCI Simple Communications Controller” one. And when I try to “update” the driver, the system won’t find one. I’ve tried to search the web for one, but nojoy up to now.

Two more pieces of info: When the sound’s not working, many times the PC will just seem to lock up. The cursor “hourglass” will just spin. Like for 5 or 10 minutes (sometimes until I just power the thing off). And periodically, when the PC catches up, the sound will work fine. It’s as if the computer’s trying to bring the drivers up, is having a hard time with it, and once it gets it all straightened out everything works great. ‘Til I re-start.

The second thing is that when I look in the device manager, I have TWO instances of the Plug and Play Device Enumerator. And they’re the same. Maybe they’re colliding. I can’t find out how to uninstall one of them. “Uninstall” isn’t an option presented.

I’m at my wit’s end. I’m not at that particular computer right now (on the road for work), but I’ll try to answer any questions you have to try to help diagnose/solve this deal. I do have logmein working, so I can probably find out whatever’s necessary from where I am.

As a side note, I’ve tried drinking more, but that just makes things fuzzier and doesn’t solve the problem . Maybe I’m not drinking the right stuff…Any suggestions along this line may not solve anything, except help kill the pain…

Any help would be appreciated.

Chasaway

[ThePythonicCow]

Does the BIOS say you have a sound card? The BIOS runs for a couple of seconds when you first power the system on, and you have to hit some key, such as "Delete" or "F2" to get it to stop at that point and present a BIOS menu (in primitive 24 line, 80 character wide, text mode). Power on and keep mashing whatever key is needed, several times a second, until you see the first Windows splash screen, by which time you can give up as its too late on that boot, and try again to enter the BIOS on the next power up.

From what you say, this seems like an intermittent hardware problem. Likely your sound comes from some integrated sound chip soldered on the motherboard -- not a replaceable item. However if one of the PCI slots is not used on your system, you can add your own sound card. I usually end up doing that on most of my systems, as the integrated sound chips are usually crap.

When you add your own sound card, you will want to disable the integrated sound in the BIOS, to avoid conflicts.

Another thing I'd try would be booting off a bootable Linux CD, and see if it can find sound, but not everyone has a bootable Linux CD at hand, so that might not help you.

Is that E310 one of those BTX motherboards with the CPU near the front and the funky front vent:

Image from: http://nuxx.net/gallery/v/computers/delldimensione310/

---

For a sound card, something like the following should work: Creative Sound Blaster SB0570 Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail $29.99 at Egghead.com

The sound -might- be coming from an add-on board that's already in one of the two PCI slots (bottom right in the picture above, if that's your system.) In that case, try taking the card out and putting it back in -- could just be a loose connection between the card and the PCI connector.

[ThePythonicCow]

You’ve tried re-seating your sound card,

My bet is on this one, from the symptoms he's describing.

See also the last paragraph of my longer post above.

[Chasaway]

No, you’re right the first time...it’s onboard.

It looks like a small (less than an inch) silver box. The plug-ins for the mic, speakers, etc. are all right there together.

I think I’m gonna go buy a sound card..

Chasaway

[ThePythonicCow]

I think I’m gonna go buy a sound card..

Enjoy.

Does that image I posted above look like your system?

[Chasaway]

Yep...

From the best I can recall...

I had it open on Sunday trying to find out what was in there...

C

[Chasaway]

However, mine has the plug ins for mic, speakers, etc. up near where your power supply is.

And it’s just a little silver box (sound card?).

Maybe it’s fried (intermittently).

C

[ThePythonicCow]

And it’s just a little silver box (sound card?).

The little silver box where your speaker wires plug in is not the sound card or chip. It is just the connectors. Wires or traces connect run from that box to your motherboard, and your sound chip (and a few related capacitors, likely) is one of the many chips on that big board.

So ... yes ... get a new sound card for one of your PCI slots, then be sure to disable the builtin sound in your BIOS when you install the sound card.

[papasmurf]

If you would like to learn about Event ID's, you can subscribe HERE. It's only $24.00 a year, and is very helpful. Or, you can google each ID and get the gist of it. I have books. Lots and lots of books from MS. LOL

If you want, I'll come back on tonight and look some up for you, just PM me.

[papasmurf]

Event ID 7024 is generated when the Service Control Manager cannot properly terminate a service. The name of the service and the error generated by it are usually displayed in the event. 7024 is not specific to a particular service, it may occur no matter what service is failing.

Often, you’ll get 7024 and 3095 for the same error, since 7024 is a “generic” service failure ID, and 3095 is specific.

From Event ID net-ID 7000...
“The system cannot find the device specified.”
“The system cannot find the file specified.”
“The system cannot find the path specified.

Service: “SoundMAX Agent Service”/”VMware Authorization Service”/”APC UPS Service”, error “Incorrect function. is not a valid Win32 application.” - This may occur if a file called “Program” is located on the root of C: drive (Quicken for example may create such file). This is interfering with “C:\Program Files” directory and some applications get “confused” and fail to start. In this case, I renamed Program to Program2 and then I was able to start the services mentioned above. This operation however, caused problems to Quicken. If the C:\Program file exists, Windows may give you a warning at startup about potential problems.

[Auntie Mame]

Oh, papa, don’t bother with all that work. I’ve been doing some research on the microsoft site and googling these event errors and I’m starting to figure it out. One thing though, do you know where to go to change the netlogon’s properties? I think I need to set it to manual according to an article I’m reading; however, they don’t say where to find it. The article says, “The Netlogon service should not be configured to start automatically on a server that is not a domain member. Configure the Netlogon service so that its startup type is set to “Manual.””

I did a search and found a couple instances of netlogon on this computer, but can’t find anywhere to change its startup type. If this has to be done in the registry, I’m not going there, that’s beyond my comfort level.

In any event, thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

[wardaddy]

It’s an out of sync Microsoft update.

They have patches for this.

Happened to me last December.

I think MS does this to sell Vista and to force IE7

[wardaddy]

Did you get it fixed?

There are some sites on this....

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935448/,

[Chasaway]

Wardaddy...

Haven’t fixed it yet. I’m hoping to be back home today and am going to work through this and see if it takes.

Thanks for the direction...

Chasaway