k7s5a sound driver issue

[Avalon]

Just got a used k7s5a off the FS/FT forum. It's slightly buggy and I think it could use a bios update. Aside from that, I'm not able to get the AC97 C-media onboard sound to work. I tried installing from the ECS site. The problem appears to be that during the hardware install, it can never find the files "kuser.dll" and "ks.sys", which wind up being in windows system folders I have to manually point to. Then I get the whole these drivers have not been certified by microsoft blah blah. Which is odd. Are the two files borked or am I getting the wrong sound drivers? I wish I had the cd
Any help is appreciated.

As an afterthought...I'm using one of those 60 gig maxtor drives that were going for $18 at OD a week ago. I had initial trouble trying to install windows. It'd freeze before it even got to the partition page. I pushed the IDE ribbon more tightly into the HD (it doesn't seem to want to stay in) and that got me through installing windows. But upon first boot, I couldnt get much farther than the welcome screen. It took 2-3 reboots to finally get into windows. The slight bug I mentioned above is explorer crashing a lot. Which is actually leading me to believe that the flaky IDE connection with the HD resulted in a flaky install of XP...would this perhaps be why my kuser and ks files are "bad"?

 

[mikeford]

I would carefully check all the cables again, and maybe just use a different IDE cable to be safe. Double check the master slave selection too.

 

[RickH]

Well let's see--You bought someone else?s problem MB off the forms and a cheap, super deal HD and now you are having problems. The K7s5a was junk when it was new. Why do people try to save a buck and waste a month of their time trying to get broken stuff to work? No one is that poor. It's beyond me. R

 

[Avalon]

Reinstalled windows and had no problem the second time around. Weird, but it all works. Prime is chugging away nicely.

Originally posted by: RickH
Well let's see--You bought someone else?s problem MB off the forms and a cheap, super deal HD and now you are having problems. The K7s5a was junk when it was new. Why do people try to save a buck and waste a month of their time trying to get broken stuff to work? No one is that poor. It's beyond me. R

The board was quoted as working perfectly. Plus, I've gone through and checked and there is nothing with the drive after all. You make it sound like I bought some cheap refurb HD. I did not. I seized an opportunity and bought a 60gb Maxtor 7200RPM ATA133 drive. That's about as good as IDE gets, albeit drive size. Also, I needed to get a k7s5a because the computer I'm working with only has SDRAM and an athlon XP chip. That's one of the few boards that fit the bill. Ever thought of that smart guy? The system isn't mine. I get what I can within the guidelines specified by the owner. And as for a matter of fact, people can be that poor. Fortunately, I'm not, but there are plenty of people much worse off than you. Go thread crap somewhere else.

:thumbsdown:

 

[Arcanedeath]

Many of the K7S5A's did not including Cmedia sound, if you have a version 1 to 3.1 (and possibly the one after 3.1 but I never worded w/ those) of the board it actualy used SIS's Ac'97 sound and you need a different driver, I'd suggest checking your board version to make sure that you actualy have the Cmedia codec. if you have version 3.1 ( one of the most common versions) it has SiS audio.

 

[Peter]

Almost there, arcanedeath.

The board ALWAYS uses the SiS (7012) AC97 sound ENGINE. However, two versions (not revisions, mind) using different AC97 CODECS have been made, one using Realtek ALC10x stereo sound and the other having the 4-channel C-Media 9738.

You should check what codec chip is on yours, and if it's the Realtek, use the "7012" audio driver from www.sis.com .

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: Peter
Almost there, arcanedeath.

The board ALWAYS uses the SiS (7012) AC97 sound ENGINE. However, two versions (not revisions, mind) using different AC97 CODECS have been made, one using Realtek ALC10x stereo sound and the other having the 4-channel C-Media 9738.

You should check what codec chip is on yours, and if it's the Realtek, use the "7012" audio driver from www.sis.com .

Arcanedeath, Peter: Bravo. That seems to be the end of my sound issues, and now I've got the board's bios updated and it's running like a champ. Thanks for your help!