Maximum PC

Dear Forum,

I recently suffered complete failure of "C" drive, on which Win XP Pro SP3 was updated to Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Since I had cloned the XP image to a new HD before the Vista upgrade, I was able to recover XP. After a few days of software upgrades, XP is back to normal except: 1) There is no sound either from Creative SB Live card (PCI), or from the Realtek HD Audio support on (aBit IP35 Pro) motherboard (MB). 2) A PCI based USB 2.0 (5-port) card doesn't work. Neither the sound devices nor the USB card are detected by XP so aren't shown by Device Manager. All of the above functioned correctly on Vista.

I welcome any information on potential root cause/causes of my problem/problems and any suggestions on potential remedies. Thanks for your support.

It's probably because XP doesn't have drivers installed, but Vista has a generic driver for both.

I suspected this and attempted to load the required drivers. However, the task failed with the error message being no device found. One question I asked in original post is whether it was safe to install drivers using the original CDs included with the motherboard (Realtek HD) and Creative Sound Blaster card but no one responded.

Thanks for your reply.

ok i must ask one simple question..is this an OEM pc..like Dell..HP,Acer and the likes?

if so then yes ..try to load the drivers on the disc.

if nothng else it would get the ball rolling.

My desktop is home built using premium retail parts and is ~ 2 years old:
- Intel Core2D E6600 Boxed
- Artic Pro Cooler
- aBit IP35 Pro (775) MB
- 4 GB Corsair DDR2 RAM (CAS 5-5-5-15)
- 3 x SATA 7200 HDs ( C: WD Caviar Black 640 GB); (F: Seagate
1000 GB; G: Seagate 500 GB)
- 2 x Optical (LG: DVD-RW; LG: DVD-RW, BDROM)
- Video Card: nVidia 8500 GT (PCIe x16)
- Corsair PSU: 650 W
- Cooler Master 690 Case

I plan to build a new desktop sometime in the future, so the current system is my mainstay.

Take a trip to Windows Update, probably the driver(s) will be installed from there.

Windows Update was no joy. Sound drivers were not installed for either Creative card or RealTek on board audio. I'm not sure which remedies excluding replacing motherboard are left. However I will try other options recommended.

I would try http://www.realtek.com/downloads and click HD Audio Codecs link. That should take care of the onboard sound IF onboard sound is enabled in the BIOS.

The SB live card drivers you can find @ http://support.creative.com where you click on Sound Blaster and then click the link at the bottom of the next page as it is an older product then select Live and then the model.

Here is status of latest attempt to restore sound in WinXP Pro SP3:

1. Installed Realtek HD drivers, but resuilts the same: a) No sound; b) Control Panel and Device Manager show no Audio Device.

2. Creative Drivers won't install, since "No Creative Device installed."

Any idea of what else I should try?

Probably an IRQ conflict, but who knows, I would suggest going into the bios, and disabling the onboard audio.

I will go into BIOS and disable onboard audio. Interesting observation: No IRQ is reported for onboard audio or Creative SB PCI card. Unfortunately, uploading the .gif file with IRQ/ISA report failed.

two more things to try.

swap the SB or USB card to a different PCI slot.

reset the BIOS if youre comfortable with that. youll have to re enter drive settings (AHCI/IDE, boot order etc) plus any overclock settings, although for now run with stock clocks till this is sorted out. might try disabling unused stuff while youre in the BIOS too (firewire, serial, parallel ports).