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Geek Culture / Sudden auto-disabling soundcard, and it's not just me

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David R
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Joined: 9th Sep 2003
Location: 3.14
Posted: 15th Sep 2006 00:14 Edited at: 15th Sep 2006 00:15
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Well, I have a very strange problem. My soundcard has disabled itself, and has no option to re-enable it. Even the BIOS reports the card is disabled and "Not present".

I first assumed the card was dead. But, then, an even stranger occurance... My friend rang me up complaining of a PC problem - his soundcard had disabled itself

His problem is exactly the same as mine, and we are running completely different configs and cards. We also have sufficient AV protection too.

The only thing we both have in common, is a recent installation of Flash Player 9, which seems to be impossible to remove; it simply doesn't do anything. But it's definately a valid version of Flash, since it works etc.

Strange new worm/virus or something maybe? My friend has only just reconnected to BB internet, and got the problem immediately after starting to use his connecion.

Any ideas what the heck is going on?

Quote: "Why would anyone spend that kind of money on rubber jewellery? - Phaelax"
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jinzai
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Posted: 15th Sep 2006 04:42
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1. Do you have a EEPROM based BIOS? Has it been upgraded recently?
2. When you spoke of the card, you mentioned it was "Not present". When it was present, was there a way to disable it then? (I am still unclear - is it a bus card, or built-in the MB?)
3. If it is a card, have you moved it to another slot?
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Phaelax
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Posted: 15th Sep 2006 10:54
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I'd check the card didn't come loose or anything, another slot may also be a good idea as jinzai said.

Nice quote btw.

"Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy" - Rob Pike
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David R
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Posted: 17th Sep 2006 13:41 Edited at: 17th Sep 2006 13:42
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Nah, all the hardware etc. if fine, and the BIOS hasn't been touched in either PC for years.

I got together with my friend, and we removed each soundcard and placed it in a completely different PC. Both work fine in the other PC.

Quote: "When you spoke of the card, you mentioned it was "Not present". When it was present, was there a way to disable it then? (I am still unclear - is it a bus card, or built-in the MB?)"

Both are internal motherboard soundcards. They both state "Not present" but it appears to be the mixer/audio codec on each that is disabled. There is no way to re-enable either the soundcard itself or the codec/mixer on either computer, since both have the enable/disable drop down list blanked out. Both are running completely different configurations aswell.

Quote: "Why would anyone spend that kind of money on rubber jewellery? - Phaelax"
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jinzai
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Posted: 18th Sep 2006 11:05 Edited at: 18th Sep 2006 11:13
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Okay, but now you are simply confusing me. They are buscards; they plug-in...they are not chips soldered to the motherboard. Okay, you have a CMOS battery failure. Replace your battery an redo your BIOS configuration. Same for your friend.

The codecs are not on the card. If they were, the card would still not work in another PC.
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indi
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Posted: 18th Sep 2006 11:49
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erm what type of sound card do you both have?.

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David R
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Posted: 18th Sep 2006 19:54 Edited at: 18th Sep 2006 19:55
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Quote: "Okay, you have a CMOS battery failure. Replace your battery an redo your BIOS configuration. Same for your friend."


Nope, BIOS is fine. Both have retained all time/date settings and hardware settings.

Quote: "They are buscards; they plug-in...they are not chips soldered to the motherboard."

By motherboard I meant on-board SC's

Quote: "The codecs are not on the card. If they were, the card would still not work in another PC."

I did not say that. I said that both the codec and the card are disabled, but the codec isn't re-enablable. The card is, but doesn't work without the codec.

Quote: "erm what type of sound card do you both have?."

Mine has some strange on board card with no specific name; its only ID being "MMACM-SC", and my mate has a Realtek card of some description.

Quote: "Why would anyone spend that kind of money on rubber jewellery? - Phaelax"
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jinzai
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Posted: 20th Sep 2006 04:37 Edited at: 20th Sep 2006 05:02
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So then...the "Not present" message was on your BIOS configuration page...under something like Plug and Play?
If you swap cards...your friend and you...is there any change in symptoms?

A few thoughts...
1. Not present means that the BIOS does not see ANYTHING on the bus that is attempting to use a particular interrupt resource. What type of card is it? 8/16bit ISA? PCI?

2. Naturally the codecs would have nothing to encode/decode from/to if the system had no soundcard. So...that symptom is simply pointing out again what the Not Present one told you already. To be honest, I am pretty sure many sound cards have codecs on the card, and also in software, so that is really a wash after all. Sorry to seem short.

3. Still feel uneasy about your CMOS area...like John Edwards...they want me to acknowledge your CMOS...strange.

4. You might also...if you are desperate/brave enough set your BIOS to reconfigure the allocation of the resources. Putting the cards in another machine only says that they can work. If they had the same configuration that they had in your machine when they did work, then you could say...something is wrong with my machine...the card is okay. The thing is...with PnP...the new machines could've reconfigured them, changing the IRQ/IO port, memory space, etc. which means that the card could still be the trouble in your machine.
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