Well, it's official. I Am A GEEK! I just completed my first computer build and I am pretty darn proud of myself! And despite reading all about the tribulations you IT folken go through on a regular basis, plus the horror stories from the newbies, it turned out to be pretty painless. Here's the rundown: Core 2 Duo E6400
GA-965P-DS3
2 GB PC-6400 OCZ2P800R22GK (Platinum) (rev 2)
Seagate 7200.10 320GB HD
WD 2500KS 250GB HD
AOpen GeForce 6600GT
BenQ DW1650
XP Home
The most amazing thing about the whole experience...when I plugged it in and flipped the switch, EVERYTHING worked...I didn't have to futz with the BIOS or pull out one of the memory sticks to get it to boot...nothing. It just cranked right up. Everything was going great for the first day, then I started having some strange experiences with Windows. I was using an older copy of XP Home, prior to SP2 and about 85 other fixes. I had recently stumbled across nLite, though, and had done my best to slipstream a tidy installation disk, but I must have done something wrong because after everything booted up and I was on the internet, Microsoft started panicking about me registering my copy of XP immediately, but for some reason it wouldn't validate, even though I have a retail (not OEM) code that should have been acceptable. Still, other than Microsoft's over reaction, things were going smoothly. I started transferring files and going through the BIG effort of trying to get the OS and other software up to date and ready to use. A few major revisions and about 85 security updates and hotfixes downloaded and installed. Then sometime during this process of adding software and rebooting and then doing it over and over, my DVD drives disappeared from Explorer, Device manager, etc. and sometime after that, when it got very quite, I realized that the Realtek sound device/controller was missing.
I eventually got the drives back (just yesterday) through disconnecting and rebooting and clearing the CMOS and reinstalling Windows and a few other things. However, I still have no sound.
I am confidently blaming it all on Microsoft, though. On that first boot-up day, when everything was working so nicely, so was the sound because I was looking and listening to video and audio files and there didn't seem to be any issues with the files or the hardware. However, I have made some progress with getting it back. All the codecs and drivers show up in Device Manager, right where you'd expect them and they all say the devices are working correctly. BUT it looks like only the software is being picked up: when you open Sound and Audio Devices the first page shows"No Audio Device" and there's nothing listed in under any of the hardware headings. BUT when I open Realtek's little set up/testing utility, after you do a little configuring, there's a test of your speaker set up, and I get sound during the test. But that's the end of it. No sound from any other function. It's certainly not a speaker problem, the work fine, and I've looked while playing a sound or video file, that the file properties or statistics look like the files have no audio., showing zeroes in the audio field.
I've done everything in Device Manager and BIOS and CMOS and with the hardware that I could think of. I've rolled back drivers, uninstalled drivers and hardware, reinstalled Realtek's drivers, downloaded new ones in case something got corrupted, etc. I'm out of ideas. Well, not entirely true...if I can't fix it easily, I'll just go pick up an Audigy card and call it a day. But I'll give it another shot, if anyone has any suggestions. On, and please know that I meant that earlier Geek comment as a compliment. I've learned a lot from you tech-heads and couldn't have built the dream machine without you. Thank you!
Oh and in case you were wondering about my totally unimpressive video card (see above), I am not a gamer...at all. I do a lot of multimedia work: sound and video editing, encoding, authoring, etc. and although the video is very important, it doesn't require as much as gaming does. Hence, the mediocre VGA card.
Thanks!
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