New graphics card has kiboshed my sound

[Unitedite]

Hi folks

 

A friend gave me his spare GFX card the other day, and when I installed it I lost all sound on the computer.

 

I'm aware that this is a fairly common problem, but I've tried every obvious solution and it still isn't working. I have:

 

Checked that the volume isn't muted and the speakers work

Downloaded/installed the latest Realktek AC97 audio drivers

Downloaded/installed the latest Realktek HD audio drivers

Reinstalled the audio drivers that came with my mobo

Downloaded/installed the lates ATI drivers for the GFX card

Attempted to change the audio device back to the old one in Sounds and Audio Devices (not listed)

Disabled the HDMI audio device from the new GFX card in device manager (now there's no audio device at all)

Checked that onboard audio is enabled in BIOS

Reset the BIOS

 

What's strange is this: when I first installed the card, it worked fine playing startup audio and a test song. About 10 minutes later I tried to play another song, there was a loud 'pop' and the computer rebooted. Now, the onboard audio is not listed in device manager and there isn't even audio output on POST (it's configured to tell me "system has completed power on self test"). Taking the GFX card out brings back the audio so the 'pop' I heard, while slightly alarming, doesn't indicate any physical damage either.

 

As you can perhaps tell by the fact I've tried 3 different audio drivers, I'm not 100% clear about which is the one I need, but given that it doesn't even work on POST I can't imagine this is an issue with software/drivers. That said, the fact that it did work, at first, with this hardware configuration, confuses me. Everything seems to suggest that the onboard audio is disabled at BIOS level, but it demonstrably isn't.

 

The card is an ATI Radeon HD 5450, my mobo an Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe with Realtek ALC850 onboard audio. I'm running Win XP SP3.

 

Any ideas?

 

p.s. Options I'm aware of but haven't tried:

 

Reinstalling XP - I don't have the patience

Flashing the BIOS - I'm a bit concerned about messing that up

Cleaning out redundant drivers (such as the ones for my old card) - I don't know a reliable program to do this and I'm not going to try anything unreccomended

Edited May 6, 2011 by Unitedite

[Lateralizm]

i had the same problem as well, the card series tends to ignore your pc's normal built in audio. The only reason i have any audio is because i set my speakers up through my keyboard. I would recommend to just use some really nice headphones or something, unless you have a logitech g-whatever number. If so, lemme know (unintentional rhyming).

[DarkWarrior45]

Here's what you can try. Try uninstalling all the ATI drivers, and then use a driver scrubber to completely clean any remnants off the computer. Get your Realtek audio back up and running. Then reinstall the ATI Catalyst control center. When you install it however, click on custom install instead and disable the HDMI drivers that it wants to install. HDMI drivers, whether they be nvidia, ATI, or intel, have the bad reputation of conflicting with onboard audio.

[Unitedite]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

I removed all possibly conflicting drivers and tried again but it still wouldn't play. I figured there was some kind of IRQ conflict and thought I'd cracked it when a friend suggested disabling the parallel/serial ports in BIOS to free up some slots - it worked! Then, next time I restarted it wasn't working again... I disabled pretty much everything in BIOS except the real essentials, but still no joy - and in retrospect I had a look at the IRQ assignments in dev man and the onboard audio wasn't even listed, so I'm pretty convinced the problem is some other kind of funky mobo level prioritising. I checked the GFX card to see if there were any jumper settings I could use to disable the sound, but to no avail. Only other things I could think of were updating the BIOS and reinstalling windows, both of which, as I've said, I was loath to do.

 

In the end, I gave up and cadged an ancient soundblaster card from a friend - seems to be working fine now.

[Themantogoto]

Check your audio settings and make sure that the cards HDMI port (if any) is not set as default

[nimd4]

Check your audio settings and make sure that the cards HDMI port (if any) is not set as default

Right, simple..:)