Member Avatar for Danieljbrown1

Ok, where do I start, long story short, we had Vista, it sucked, formated the crap out of everything(including the recovery) yep, not a bright thing to do, my bad. Anyways xp is up and running but know the sound isn't working at all. I go to the control panel to turn the sound up and the option is there but it's not letting me turn it up at all.

we tried to download soundblaster driver but honestly not sure of what we are doing or what happened. To install the sound driver I need to know what driver is in the computer. I'm assuming the speakers aren't working because we havn't "trained" the comp to recognise them.

Can anyone help at all, man I wish there was a way to just get a new recovery for xp.

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Dani AI

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A short, practical checklist for the Vista->XP reinstall described by . The symptom "volume control present but sliders inactive" most often means the OS has no proper audio driver or the onboard audio is disabled. and were right to point at hardware/driver origin; the steps below show exactly how to identify the audio chipset and restore the correct driver.

Open Device Manager (Start -> Run -> devmgmt.msc) and inspect "Sound, video and game controllers" and any "Unknown device" entries. Right-click the problem device, open Properties and view the Hardware Ids (look for a string like PCI\VEN_XXXX&DEV_YYYY). Searching that VEN/DEV string quickly reveals the chipset vendor (for example, VEN_10EC maps to Realtek). Once the chipset/vendor is known, download the matching Windows XP audio driver for that chipset or the motherboard/PC model.

If no audio device appears, check the machine BIOS for an "Onboard Audio", "Azalia" or "HD Audio" option and enable it if disabled (common keys to enter BIOS are Del, F2 or F10). After the correct driver is installed, confirm the Windows Audio service is running (Services -> Windows Audio set to Automatic) and that the device is set as the default playback device with volume not muted. Headphones in the front jack are a good quick test to separate driver vs speaker hardware problems.

Because the factory recovery was removed, the easiest long-term source of the right drivers is the motherboard or OEM support page for the model; manufacturers can also supply recovery/driver media for a fee. If a mismatched package (for example a SoundBlaster installer when the board uses Realtek) was installed, uninstall it first and then install the correct driver. As a fast workaround, a low-cost USB audio adapter or cheap PCI sound card will restore sound if driver hunting proves difficult.

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Member Avatar for bobbyraw

you need to find out what type of sound driver you need,
what is the name (manufacturer) of the pc,
is the sound onboard( meaning made into the mother board) or a sound card ( installed in the pCI slot.

Member Avatar for Member #248785

go to Windows update and see if your sound driver is available to download via the update. Also, another option would be to go to your sound board's manufacturer site and check for setup downloads there.

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