No sound - something internal I don't know about?

[Felecha]

My stepdaughter inherited, literally, a computer from her father. He died suddenly last month. I spent yesterday afternoon setting it up here, and it's all OK except the sound. No sound at all.

This is a machine my daughter is very familiar with. She visited him regularly, they downloaded MP3s together, recorded things with microphones, video stuff, etc. She says the sound was working just a week ago when she was at his apartment during one of the long sessions of packing things up. He was meticulous, kept all his boxes and packing materials, so it got here in its original box, well protected.

HP Pavilion 9680c 650mhz, 128RAM, 40GB Maxtor, 98SE, Device Manager calls the card a Master Riptide Wave Audio Device. There are no yellow warnings anywhere in Device Manager.

Plugged in the speakers from her old machine, Labtec little cubes off a subwoofer, with a volume control wheel. When I plug into the audio jack on the card (I've made the mistake before of using the wrong hole, I tried them all, I'm sure I'm using the correct hole), there is a very audible static response from the speakers -- there is action there. Turn the volume wheel, you can "hear" it get "louder" all the way up to the top, where it would hurt your ears if the real sound ever suddenly came on. No sound, but the static emptiness is there.

Tried my speakers from my machine, no go. Tried the speakers that he had used, no go. Same thing - static response, no sound.

Tried MP3 with RealJukeBox, no go, not even the introductory 4 notes from RJB -- "toonk, toonk, ... toonk, toonk".

Tried a CD, tried some of the Sounds from Control Panel/Sounds, .wav files. Tried midi files.

My home is networked, so we hoped to move her beloved collection of MP3s to his machine. The network sees his machine, and I can play MP3s from his hard drive on my speakers downstairs.

Tried removing the sound card (not physically, just in Device Manager) and let Plug and Play find it. Restored the drivers fine.

Went into Control Panel/Multimedia on a friend's advice, looking for anywhere that there might be a system setting that's muting all sounds. Nothing that I could see. Everything looks good, although I'm not familiar with that territory.

Volume button on the Systray is OK.

What could possibly be wrong? As I said, my daughter used it and played sounds a week ago. Nothing but a careful packing, unpacking, and setup. And the static response from the card makes me think it's not the problem.

Any help?

Thanks so much

Felecha

 

[Ivar]

Try looking this machine up on HP.COM. There you should find all the drivers it needs.

With best regards,
Ivar

 

[Felecha]

I checked there to see if there was a driver for sound for 9680c, and in fact couldn't find it. When I removed it, I hoped and expected it was on their own machine from the factory, and P & P would find it, which it seemingly did.

 

[Smbu]

Try removing the sound card in Safe Mode from the System settings in the Control Panel.

 

[Felecha]

A Safe Mode removal is more than a regular one? I ask because a long time back someone helping me with another driver problem on my own machine was saying that sometimes you have to really get serious with 98 -- physically remove the card, remove it in Device Manager, and find it in some subfolder of System or somewhere, where 98 will go to get the last copy of the driver that it used, for the reinstall. To really start from scratch, you have to really erase it from the view of 98. But I don't have any source for the driver if I had to physically give it back to Windows when it found new hardware. The HP site really doesn't seem to offer it. I hate big corporate Support sites, too. They are chaotic, offer email support for registered users -- he kept the shipping box, but I don't know where the paperwork is, or the driver disks. It was a refurbished machine from a website, I know that much. So the hope of getting answers from the HP site seems slim to me, and I have had experience of literally days of my time trying that stuff.So, I was hoping someone would tell me where the little "ON" switch is that I didn't know about.But thanks. I'll try the Safe Mode thing later today. She's asleep now.F

 

[Felecha]

Actually, now I'm remembering my friend back then went into Windows/Inf, found the driver's inf file, moved it out of the way, then when Plug and Play said "What do you want to do?" he was able to install it again from the file he'd hidden away. Something like that.

I just checked (love this network thing) and in his Windows/Inf file is indeed something called riptide.inf.

Am I correct that an inf file is the one from which the driver gets installed? So if I go industrial strength with this, I pull the card, move riptide.inf to a temporary folder, remove the driver in Safe Mode, reboot, right click on riptide.inf, select Install, it will install so another reboot will find it and hopefully an uncorrupted driver will be there?

I really don't knwo this territory all that well, so I hesitate to play with it, but ...

Thanks

F

 

[Littlenikki]

Ya might try here for drivers


Try here for your drivers

 

[Felecha]

OK, I found a file, riptide.exe. Downloaded onto my own machine downstairs here. So I can copy it up to hers when I want to, and install from there if needed? Will there be lots of variants of the one I want?

 

[Littlenikki]

probably not but im far from an expert

 

[DARRIN]

Is it intigrated into the mobo. If it is it could be disabled in the bios. Other than that I would go buy another sound card and try it.

 

[Felecha]

Do you mean this HP machine's interface with the sound card is deeper than just a driver installation? Integrated into the mobo? I'm not sure what that means.

When she wakes up I can try a look at the BIOs.

It would be listed under something like Peripherals?

 

[bozack]

BIOS = CMOS or the system that mates your motherboard with your hardware

this will not be listed in windows at all but rather you get to it by pressing either the del, f10 or any other key which is instructed to at boot, after entering the CMOS you might be a little overwhelmed and you must be careful not to change any settings you might not be familiar with, since some settings might make your computer unworkable.

When someone is talking about Integrated peripherals they mean components that are physically built onto the motherboard of the computer, traditional sound and video cards were their own entities untill large OEM manufacturers decided it was more cost efficient to make the sound, and video compoenets of the motherbard.

You can usually tell if the sound is integrated in two ways, the first by opening the case and physically looking at the setup, if everything is soldered onto the mainboard it is integrated.

The other way is to look at the back of the machine, if the sound ports are located on an expansion bay slot chances are it is not integrated, however if they are a part of the I/O sheild (where your mouse and stuff plugs into) then it is most likely integrated.

Some things to look for, try different receptacles on the back, most common cause of sound not working is it is plugged into the wrong outlet.

Secondly make sure nothing is muted in the sound properties that shouldnt be, if you have mute all selected guess what? there will be no sound from anything.

if the card is stand alone and not a part of the mainboard I would suggest removing it and reinstalling it if all else fails, however if it is integrated and it is determined that it is bad you can always buy a stand alone model, however I have never seen a sound card just go bad(however I am sure it is possible as anything with computers is possible)

good luck

 

[Littlenikki]

Edit: Bozac posted while I was typing and said what I was going too say, Only ALOT better then I said it so I let him have the glory as is only right.

 

[Felecha]

Thanks

I never heard of an integrated sound card before. For all I know there's a hole for the sound higher up. There's definitely a PCI sound card along with the other things in back, so when I set it up I just plugged it in there, without thinking about anything else. I'll look up higher when my daughter wakes up. Maybe that's it, and I really was using the wrong hole after all.

I've changed sound cards, modems, RAM, hard drives, gone into BIOS lots of times before, so I'm not a complete rookie. But no big expert, either. So if anyone wants to guide me into things, great, I'm not afraid, and I know when not to try something that I don't know about.

Again, thanks all

F

 

[DARRIN]

You might have a sound card and integrated audio. In which case you would have 2 sets of holes. One set would be up near your parallel & seial ports ( that would be integrated) the other set, if you have a pci card would be down in one of the expansion slots, probably near the video connector. Make sure you try both sets.

 

[Felecha]

Got it. But gotta wait till the kid gets up. We're in the big storm that's blanketing the Northeast with snow today, so school is off and she's sleeping in.

 

[Felecha]

Wow! It worked! Never heard of that before (I've had my computers custom built rather than going Compaq or HP), so I could have looked forever and never noticed. Has a PCI card, for sure, but up top are the holes for what must be the integrated sound device -- plugged in, blasted out!

Thank you all so much!!!

F

 

[Overman]

Are you saying that you have integrated sound AND a PCI Sound card in the computer?

If so, why are you using the integrated sound (holes near the serial and parallel port) and not

the PCI Sound card (I'm assuming that the PCI sound card would be a better card)? Just

wondering.

 

[Felecha]

I wasn't. As I said at top, the machine belonged to my daughter's natural father, who died a month ago. Why he had a separate card, and why the machine was putting out to the integrated device, I just don't know. But at this point I'm going to let it go. She's happy with the sound she's getting, and I don't know how to switch it over. I spent many unhappy hours on it already. Coulda looked forever, too.

Again, thanks all

F

 

[DARRIN]

Glad you got it working.