EDIT: Serial port 2 was the problem. I disabled it as cholley suggested and everything works perfectly now.
Now I can avoid my fourth Windows reinstall in the past 3 weeks. What a relief...
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I just installed a new motherboard (Asus P4S333), power supply (Antec pp352x) and CPU (Intel P41.6A) and everything was working great. Then all of a sudden without changing any settings or installing any new programs I lost sound completely. I have since tried the following:
1) Changing sound cards...I have used both a Diamond MX300 and the onboard C-media 8738.
2) Changing PCI slots for the MX300.
3) Upgrading drivers for both the MX300 and the C-media.
4) Fiddling with the BIOS settings for onboard PCI audio and AC97 controllers.
5) Windows Update
6) Both speakers and headphones, both of which are known to work on other devices.
7) Unmuting and maximizing volume with Windows Volume Control.
8) Checked volume within each individual program (Quicktime, WinDVD, Musicmatch, Media Player).
9) Setting the preferred device with Control Panel/Multimedia Properties.
10) Enabling and disabling DirectSound/hardware acceleration with Control Panel/Multimedia Properties.
11) Checked device manager and there are no conflicts or errors detected.
12) Warm and cold reboots.
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13) Made sure DMA is enabled for all drives (as per bruincal's suggestion).
NOTHING. I get no sound when playing DVDs w/ WinDVD or Quicktime files but neither program seems aware that there is a problem because they run normally. OTOH, Musicmatch Jukebox gives me a short 1 sec. burst of noise during its splash audio when starting but cuts off abruptly, and freezes when an mp3 file is played. Windows Media Player spits out randomly spaced sound <1 sec. bursts when attempting to play an mp3 but does not freeze/crash.
I am stumped. What other factors can affect audio playback? I don't see any way that this could be a hardware problem so is it some kind of problem with Windows itself? Reinstalling is a PITA but there seems to be no other choice. I would greatly appreciate any help/advice. Thanks.
--------------------
I just installed a new motherboard (Asus P4S333), power supply (Antec pp352x) and CPU (Intel P41.6A) and everything was working great. Then all of a sudden without changing any settings or installing any new programs I lost sound completely. I have since tried the following:
1) Changing sound cards...I have used both a Diamond MX300 and the onboard C-media 8738.
2) Changing PCI slots for the MX300.
3) Upgrading drivers for both the MX300 and the C-media.
4) Fiddling with the BIOS settings for onboard PCI audio and AC97 controllers.
5) Windows Update
6) Both speakers and headphones, both of which are known to work on other devices.
7) Unmuting and maximizing volume with Windows Volume Control.
8) Checked volume within each individual program (Quicktime, WinDVD, Musicmatch, Media Player).
9) Setting the preferred device with Control Panel/Multimedia Properties.
10) Enabling and disabling DirectSound/hardware acceleration with Control Panel/Multimedia Properties.
11) Checked device manager and there are no conflicts or errors detected.
12) Warm and cold reboots.
-----------------------------
13) Made sure DMA is enabled for all drives (as per bruincal's suggestion).
NOTHING. I get no sound when playing DVDs w/ WinDVD or Quicktime files but neither program seems aware that there is a problem because they run normally. OTOH, Musicmatch Jukebox gives me a short 1 sec. burst of noise during its splash audio when starting but cuts off abruptly, and freezes when an mp3 file is played. Windows Media Player spits out randomly spaced sound <1 sec. bursts when attempting to play an mp3 but does not freeze/crash.
I am stumped. What other factors can affect audio playback? I don't see any way that this could be a hardware problem so is it some kind of problem with Windows itself? Reinstalling is a PITA but there seems to be no other choice. I would greatly appreciate any help/advice. Thanks.
