Borked soundcard, however music still plays.

July 4, 2008 9:29 AM

The integrated sound card on my 6 year old PC is apparently dead, but LastFM standalone player still plays music.

Yesterday I was a bit rough with my XP sr2 PC (trying to get the side cover to close), and when it booted back up, I don't have a sound card anymore. No volume icon in taskbar, no soundcard under hardware, etc. The card is an integrated 'via voice'. I tried getting my computer to auto-recognize the card, no dice.
However, I opened the LastFM standalone player, and it works (i.e.:I hear music). The program's volume control works as well, but I have no system wide volume controls, and the volume and mute buttons on my keyboard don't do anything either.
So the card is working at some level, but windows seems to think not.
This is strange.
Should I even bother trying to sort this out?

posted by signal to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Possibly not. You can get a sound card for ten bucks. What's your time worth?
posted by box at 9:40 AM on July 4, 2008

If you're good at installing windows, I'd say backup/format/reinstall. If you're getting sound, unless you physically damaged the connectors, you're just experiencing an exciting windows glitch.
posted by shepd at 10:15 AM on July 4, 2008

My point is if there's a quick fix for this, it might be easier and faster than a) schlepping out to get a soundcard / cracking case / installing card or b) reinstalling windows / reinstalling the 20 or so programs I use on a regular basis, getting my configurations right, etc.
posted by signal at 12:26 PM on July 4, 2008

Sounds like borked drivers to me. The lid-closing may just be coincidental. I assume the reason you had the lid opened was to install something - Did you check the audio after installing that but before closing the lid?

Apologies if this is what you did when you said "tried getting my computer to auto-recognize the card", but you can always use the device manager to go through everything under [sound, video and game controllers] one by one, right click every one and select [Uninstall]. Once you're done, restart the machine. It should detect your sound card and ask for drivers. If not, try using the Add Hardware wizard.
posted by Orb2069 at 3:17 PM on July 4, 2008

I assume the reason you had the lid opened was to install something

Nope, I always kept it like that, and decided to close it as my 10 month old son was in severe risk of sticking his hand or face into it.

Will try the uninstalling then rebooting, thanks!
posted by signal at 8:22 PM on July 4, 2008

FFR: there's a service called "Windows Audio" that, for some mysterious reason, had become disabled. Reenabled it, and voila.
posted by signal at 6:49 PM on July 29, 2008