No Sound From "working correctly" Hardware Solved!

[DMA2Superman]

I had the same problem many of us were enduring with no sound coming out of what appears to be fully functioning. "Working Correctly" hardware. Searching the web only led to an increased frustration as many people (more often than not themselves dealing with a Realtek HD Codec). I was so frustrated because the device manager showed that the hardware was working fine and when I tried to see the volume properties I noticed no driver or Codecs loaded. When I went into the device manager and saw the properties for the audio Codecs, each time I would select my drivers I get "Driver is enabled but not functioning properly." or elsewhere OTHER than the DM I got a resounding "No Sound Card Installed." Elsewhere digging into my system I got a couple of errors about installing hardware or a new codec, but nothing worked.

I uninstalled and re-installed the NForce Audio Driver, the NVIDIA Audio Interface (Not exact terminology), I even went as far as trying to install the Realtek AC97 Codecs (not HD) from both MSI's and Realtek’s websites, even trying to force the HD Codec with no luck. I got so desperate I went as far as to take a suggestion that I found on Google about modifying my machine.inf file. For those unaware of what that is, it’ one of the files that it is not a good idea to touch unless you actually are positive you know what you are doing or, worst case scenario, you get a jumpstart on the other popular fix of simply re-installing Windows . No driver I tried worked. I uninstalled each one, (however for a long time the Realtek HD driver refused to come out ,) and then reinstalled the drivers as I was directed. I even went as far as to personally attempt to un-register each driver and manually delete it as I thought maybe a corrupt one is swimming around and causing all this. I removed each driver in safe mode at one point and searched the registry until I went blind searching for any indication of what is causing this nightmare. This audio issue does not allow a simple repair install either, you have to format and re-install Windows as even a repair install did not help me.

For some reason of all these people that know of this and are purchasing a brand new Mobo or PCI sound card, or losing hours to days reinstalling Windows after a nice clean format, seem to be crazy, because MSI tech support told me that they have heard nothing of such an issue and need to not “overreact” (not necessary, I started out very calm) because if the DM says it is working fine, then well, it has to be me. I found it funny he never asked me if my speakers were turned on or plugged in, in fact he never asked me if I had any at all! He eventually did offer RMA.

I then called NVIDIA support who promptly referred me to MSI support as they are completely unaware of any sound issues at all. I did try to explain that I have had nothing but trouble getting my HD Codec installed and they were nice enough to give me the direction towards the Realtek site to download an MS patch that still did not work, I kept failing the install each time it would ask me for an MS Bus Driver, (I wonder, if they knew of the patch, is that a sound problem resolution?) However, each time the failure happened during install, I easily reinstalled either the AC97 Codec or the NVIDIA Audio Driver and everything was fine.

I called Realtek, I think , because after auto-transfers and calling other numbers, they sure did not answer the phone and say Realtek, but they did inform me they would have no information about this as MSI would be the support because they have no control over who puts their product onto their board and NVIDIA and them have little control over conflicts caused by MSI or myself. It is probably a hardware conflict unseen and I need to re-install Windows. At one point he told me to move the card to another slot and try again, but as I was thinking, “I did mention this is involving the “Onboard Sound Codec” installed on my MSI K8N-Neo4 Platinum with my NVIDIA N-Force4 Ultra Chipset” he caught himself and we had a much needed laugh. I did not bother to call MS as I have no weapons in my house that could cause lethal damage when I decided to finally end it all dealing with MS Support after realizing I would have reached by then, the true definition of insanity.

When I tried several forums I was afraid to post as I noticed many posts from people who obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed, that talked down to those asking for help and decided to dump their insecurities on innocent people. I hate forums like that. IMHO, if you think we are all idiots, then simply go elsewhere and be free of our ignorance, we never forced you to reply. I have been doing this for over a decade and because I had that knowledge and I was very frustrated, I was not going to risk getting into a post war over manners. Ok, ok, I digress, in fairness MSI does not create the drivers directly that are obviously failing somehow and as a support tech, I never believe the mass of I-D-10-T errors that pop up each day due to user ignorance so I sort of understood, and NVIDIA is right, they put their hardware on MSI’s board, but NForce Audio is only a driver for the actual Realtek Codec that MSI put there and Realtek made. Realtek made me laugh and was really nice, and did sound very intelligent otherwise. This post is to help, not bash three very good companies. That was my vent, thanks for listening. I do love their stuff, and I have come to trust them all, which is probably why I wanted to yank my hair out after working on it for 12 hours and finally, desperately searching the web which gave me nothing but endless people in my situation and no solutions that worked. Finally on a lucky search page number 300+ (not kidding), I found this site:

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/faq/10entrye.htm

Apparently there is a 10 Entry Limit in Windows NT/2000/XP concerning upgrading drivers or installing hardware related to sound. It says up to SP1 for XP but that can't be true because I am on XP SP2 and it no doubt had this issue to the mark. When I went to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 like they show us, I found the driver wdmaud.drv replicated 10 times listed for my wave device. Also my midi driver (also wdmaud.drv) was replicated the same amount. The entries were in a pattern such as midi, midi1, midi2, midi3, etc. and wave, wave1, wave2, wave3, etc. I deleted all but the first entries with no number attached, leaving only one wave and midi driver, and on reboot, I got the tone I never thought I would love.

Windows XP boot-up music is sweet only so often, and this was truly one for the books. I was surprised this worked, but it appears very common for those especially attempting to install HD drivers from Realtek. This also appears to happen on others, but mostly NForce and Realtek setups from what I could tell from all the searching.

I hope this solves all your problems; this was a miracle for me. Thanks for listening to me, hope it was worth it.

Good luck. Tell me how it goes. Export the key before you edit the registry so that if it does not work, no loss.

[nForcer]

DMA2Superman, here's a thank you from dvillie who couldn't login to post a reply:

Hi there,
Sir, you are a bona fide genius.

I had a very difficult problem with my MIDI configuration to which you provided the answer

I am running an Evoltion MK-249C USB keyboard, a Micro Korg, a Midi Man four port midi interface and a Legacy Korg controller. That's a lot of MIDI crap and the problem was that my last puchase (The legacy Korg controller) did not want to work with my windows 2000 setup. Technically the Legacy Korg is not supposed to run on windows 2000, so I thought that it was my OS that was the problem. As a last ditch I did a search on USB Midi related problems on Google. And Viola! Your post came up.

I checked my registry, and yep my midi entries were up to 10. I cleared the redundant entries and wowie wow wow! My Legacy Korg system is purring like a kitten.

Thanks you, you genius man you

greets

Etienne de Villiers
Soon to be an electronic superstar due to my setup finally working.
Aaarrrgh - Just what the planet needs. More electro crapola music!!!!!

[squall_leonhart69r]

DMA2Superman, here's a thank you from dvillie who couldn't login to post a reply:

Hi there,
Sir, you are a bona fide genius.

I had a very difficult problem with my MIDI configuration to which you provided the answer

I am running an Evoltion MK-249C USB keyboard, a Micro Korg, a Midi Man four port midi interface and a Legacy Korg controller. That's a lot of MIDI crap and the problem was that my last puchase (The legacy Korg controller) did not want to work with my windows 2000 setup. Technically the Legacy Korg is not supposed to run on windows 2000, so I thought that it was my OS that was the problem. As a last ditch I did a search on USB Midi related problems on Google. And Viola! Your post came up.

I checked my registry, and yep my midi entries were up to 10. I cleared the redundant entries and wowie wow wow! My Legacy Korg system is purring like a kitten.

Thanks you, you genius man you

greets

Etienne de Villiers
Soon to be an electronic superstar due to my setup finally working.
Aaarrrgh - Just what the planet needs. More electro crapola music!!!!!

in the future this can be avoided by setting device manager to show ghosted devices and removing them.

[DMA2Superman]

in the future this can be avoided by setting device manager to show ghosted devices and removing them.

Actually no, I showed the hidden devices and it only showed one entry for my hardware, if it were that simple then so many would not have the issue. But thanks for posting, it helps to show alternatives, although this one is not right.

[squall_leonhart69r]

actually yes, you didn't enable the show non present devices hack so it won't show the ghosted devices in device manager.

Remove Unused Devices



This is a bit more of a risky procedure, but it shouldn't be too difficult or dangerous if you follow the instructions here. If you have had several Catalysts installed on your system in the past, or even an Nvidia card installed previously on the same Windows install, not to mention any other previous items of hardware which you no longer use, then this tip lets you remove them from the registry.



To view unused devices in Device Manager, do the following:



1. Open a Command Prompt by going to Start>Run and typing "cmd" (without quotes). Once the MS DOS prompt is open, type the following lines, pressing return after each:



Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1



Devmgmt.msc



Note, you can type "exit" (without quotes) in the MS DOS prompt window to close it at any time after this.



2. In the Device Manager window that opens, go to the View menu and select 'Show Hidden Devices' - this is very important if you want to see the unused devices. Now expand each of your devices and look through all the sub-components listed. You will see that some of the devices are shown in a lighter grey color.



3. For the purposes of this guide, what we need to look for are entries under the Monitor and Display Adapter devices. Under Monitor there should be one darker monitor entry for each monitor on your system. If there are any greyed out entries, you can remove them by right-clicking on the entry and selecting 'Uninstall'. Do this for all greyed out entries under the Monitor device.



4. Under the Display Adapter device, it is normal for most Radeons to have two entries - a main one, and another one which has '- Secondary' next to it. These just indicate that your graphics card is capable of two separate outputs to two different display devices. You should keep both of these. Do not attempt to uninstall the dark Secondary entry. You can however uninstall all other greyed out entries under the Display Adapter device list.