Problems with Audio

[Kabob]

OK, since my computer is currently out of commission for upgrading, I'm on my suitemate's computer, and he's been having problems with it. Here's the dealio with it:

He upgraded in the beginning of August and everything on his new computer ran fine until about a month ago, when junk started happening. Every time he hit the power button, the fans would start, but the rest of the computer would not. We figured it was a power supply issue (he was running his new system on his old 250w PSU) so we upgraded and still the problems remained.

His setup:
Athlon 64 3200+ NC
ASRock K8S8X (1.80 BIOS, we cannot get his floppy drive to work to upgrade this...)
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro
1x512MB Kingmax Value RAM
20GB Maxtor HD
Sound Blaster Live! Value (off his old Gateway system)
Thermaltake 420w PSU

We let one of my Computer Science professors take a look at it (he is hardware savvy too) and he seemed to get everything up and running. Once we go the system back to his room though, the sound did not work. We then put on the latest SB Live Value drivers. When we finished this and restarted, his computer would instantly restart as soon as it entered windows. So we restarted in safe mode and uninstalled all the sound drivers. He's had no luck since then. Also, once after he got the machine back, he hit the power and the same old problem occured; fans started but the rest of the computer didn't. That has not occured since that one time though. The Floppy drive now works, but it will not read any system boot disk I create. It keeps telling me I have a messed up I/O or something like that.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem?? Does anyone know what caused this problwm in the first place??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[mechBgon]

Suggestion, try the onboard audio instead of the old Creative card, as a fact-finding step. It's possible this will solve several problems at once, if it's been creating a chipset IRQ conflict. ASRock may have a Windows-based BIOS-update utility too, have you checked the mobo's CD-ROM or ASRock's site?

 

[Kabob]

We can't seem to get the mobo audio up and running. I'll keep working on it. Anyone got any more ideas??

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: kabob983
We can't seem to get the mobo audio up and running. I'll keep working on it. Anyone got any more ideas??

Did you uninstall the card and it's drivers? Then reinstall the mobo audio drivers and make sure you selected the mobo audio in the BIOS?

You could also try to reset your CMOS, and start again.

By the way, I would worry too much about the BIOS update right now. The only thing they did from 1.8 to 1.9 was tweak the memory sizing code. It wasn't a major upgrade.

 

[Kabob]

The mobo's sound BIOS don't seem to work. When we try installing them, it says we need a surround sound system or something...

Any clues??

We completely removed the old sound drivers and tried a new version. Still no luck a'tall.