Audio device not found: fine, so be it.

[wirednuts]

anyone who has worked with cheap computers for awhile knows that internal audio can break. for whatever reason, its a recurring nightmare to suddenly lose audio with no way to recover it.

so, i bought this used motherboard for my moms laptop. claims "sound does not work". ok, thats fine. when i get it, the sound does work. really well. for a day, then it went away. then came back. and now its gone again, for good it seems. which i understand. i bought it this way.

so my solution i think is to add a usb sound card internally. i dont want to give up the convenience of onboard sound. i know mom wont care, and she says she can use her portable usb speakerbar... but i know how it will really go (she wont complain, but i know it will bother her to always have to plug in a usb speaker). also, she wont have a mic.

anyone ever do this? im about to try. what i dont know is if the headphone output will be loud enough to run the little internal laptop speakers. i might need to use that just for the mic and headphone jacks, and then break apart a usb speaker and use the guts to drive the laptop speakers. of course, then i would also need a small usb hub to go inside ugh this probably isnt worth the hassle of a $70 motherboard but whatever. at least this configuration would always work and not even need drivers!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Not worth the effort in a laptop, since there won't be any internal USB headers. (Unless you can rip out an existing internal USB device like a Bluetooth module or something.

Internal space is also likely nonexistent, unless there's a PCMCIA cage or second HDD bay you can repurpose.

I've used devices similar to this with some success.

(Or you could just get another replacement motherboard WITH working sound, which, I hate to say, you probably should have done in the first place.)

 

[wirednuts]

the board was $30 compared to the $70 for a new one. i do agree though, i wish i would have sprung the extra $50 and just been done with it. biggest reason i didnt though was fear of the same thing happening in a few months anyway. is what it is i guess.

i already told mom about it, she is totally ok with using her usb speakerbar (she uses it all the time anyway because it sounds so much better)

also, i was in the laptop today and there really isnt enough room. it would have worked though, and i could have tapped into the header ports too... but it would probably take me a whole weekend to get it all right and thats just not feasible. so usb speakerbar it is.

whats so frustrating though is the laptop speakers work fine in the bios. the bios error beeps (like when i pull the ram out) are so loud it almost hurts my ears. the sound chip is clearly in tact, but windows simply doesnt see it. this is after 4 reformats, both vista 32bit and 64bit, and both versions of win7 too. its just so damn frustrating.... but like i said i have seen this before and its just not worth trying to fix. heck, even my e-350 server started doing this. watching tv one day and suddenly all the sound went out. i got up, looked in device manager, and the soundcard is gone. never have gotten it back since