[captainbaldo]

I was given a PC to work on and asked to go ahead and format the system and reinstall Windows. Except for constant slowing down problems (oh, and the 750+ virus infected files I found on the hard drive) the system actually worked (as far as being able to access files, listen to sound, proper video, etc. was concerned). They had absolutely no info on the system as it was apparently custom built and the builder left no info and could not be contacted.

They had Windows ME on it originally but lost the disk and I didn't have WinME so I installed Win98SE.

Long story short, I got everything installed properly but since they had no info (driver disks or otherwise) on the system and it was apparently custom made, I had to do some detective work. I finally got all the drivers except one -- for an AudioExcel AV511 sound card. I couldn't find the EXACT driver anywhere for this thing, but I read that since it was based on the C-Media 8738/PCI chipset I could just download the C-Media 8738 drivers and it would work fine. I did that and thats where the problems started.

I installed the drivers and it would install 4 devices...the audio driver, the DOS emulator, the audio legacy device, and the gameport. Right after the gameport would install everytime the system would lock up. I could not get into it again unless I went into safe mode and deleted it all from device manager and restarted. There were also about 10 other items under sound and game devices in device manager that looked like they had no business in that category, so I deleted them (I'm sorry I didn't write them down at the time), but I have re-visited the device manager in safe mode several times since then and they never came back. I also disabled anything that was not absolutley necessary in MSCONFIG and it didn't help. I finally yanked out the sound card to make sure that it was what was causing the problem and it booted up fine and worked fine.

The sound worked properly before the system was reloaded. Any ideas?

 

[crjdriver]

Here is a link to the driver for this sound card. From reading the problems people have had with it, I would just buy a new card. Anyway the driver you want is down near the bottom of the list.

 

[crjdriver]

If the driver you installed has a removal feature, then use that. If not remove the device from device manager and reboot before you install the correct driver.

 

[crjdriver]

Well I just found out you have to pay for that site, I will try and find another one.

 

[crjdriver]

Here is another one. You will need to logon to driver guide, however I believe that is free.

 

[crjdriver]

Ok on last one; you can try all three sites, however I would just get them a new card. Here is another site.

 

[crjdriver]

Just checked newegg, they have 5.1 channel sound cards for as little as $16.20 with free shipping and you pay no sales tax.

 

[captainbaldo]

I agree that I would just go with a new sound card, but this isn't my system -- it belongs to a non-profit organization and I don't know if they can just buy a new card. I'm sure they can, but I'm just trying to solve the problem as it is right now since the sound did in fact work in the past. But you're right, everything I've read about this card says its got a lot of problems. I'm exploring options right now but still have no solutions as of yet. I'll try the drivers you linked and see what kind of luck I have.

 

[captainbaldo]

A little update...

Since the card seemed to freeze the system everytime it would install the gameport driver, I tried disabling it using the C-media installation software (it has a "disable gameport" feature), but it didn't help. All the links you gave ended up not working...the links themselves worked, just not the downloads.

So finally I decided I was just going to be nice and buy these folks a new cheap card. In the meantime, I had a Creative SB Live 5.1 that I decided I would put in there until the new card came in.

I put the SB Live card in, installed the software and drivers just fine, restarted the system, and no sound. When you pull up the sound card in the device manager it has an exclamation mark next to it and when you read the properties of the device it gave a message about a file that is needed to load the drivers for this device cannot be loaded. I'm sorry I don't have the exact message but what happened after that was I restarted the system and when I got back into device manager the sound card wasn't there at all.

I thought that it might be a bad PCI slot but the sound did work fine before I formatted it using that same slot.

Ideas?

 

[crjdriver]

Just install the driver for the card, not the whole software package. Get the file from Creative's site for the card you have. Uninstall the Creative software before you install just the driver.