So, I've built two systems in the past few weeks using the Shuttle MV25N motherboard. This uses the VIA PLE133T chipset with the 686B southbridge, and the built-in VIA AC'97 sound (disabled modem and network ports in BIOS).
With one system I made a clean install of WinXP, which after I loaded the drivers worked just fine with the onboard sound (though it took me a while to figure out that unpowered speakers are not usable with this board).
With the other system I was upgrading someone's computer, and didn't want or need to do a complete wipe, so I just removed all the items in Device Manager, which works just as well, and swapped everything.
All the devices install perfectly fine, Device Manager shows the VIA AC'97 (WDM) audio device as it should (though WinXP shows several more devices, but it always seems to do that compared to Win98). However for some reason, the Multimedia Properties dialog in Control Panel won't properly work with the device, so there's no sound functions. The VIA chip is listed only as a "Game Compatible Device" and then there's the modem wave device which is due to the voice modem installed. Selecting either device won't allow the "Show volume control in the taskbar" box to be available. Even if it did, I'd wonder why it won't list the VIA chipset and just shows the Game Compatible Device.
So I did pretty much every combination of stuff I could, and my roommate had done some other things before bringing it back to me (as he'd taken it to the person's house to set back up). If we run the Add New Hardware wizard, it detects a SoundBlaster Pro compatible device, which is fine as the BIOS for this board has a setting to enable such a thing. If we enable that, we can get the device to show up properly and the volume control works, but sound still won't output through any programs in the OS (but my roommate claims that they got a CD to play directly from the CD drive, but I wasn't there to see this and didn't attempt to duplicate it). I tried disabling the SoundBlaster compatibility in the BIOS, as well as removing the voice modem just in case that was an issue. If I remove the voice modem, the Multimedia Properties dialog lists that there are no audio devices at all, even though Device Manager shows the VIA audio still.
I know it's not an issue with the speakers, since I've used 2 sets as well as a direct line to my system's line-in port. It's also not a hardware failure on the board, because I connected the hard drive from this one to the other system and booted it, and it detects everything the same but still won't play any sound.
As of now, I've just put in a SoundBlaster PCI 128 and disabled on-board sound completely, but I really wish I didn't have to do this, as the on-board sound is completely adequate for the person using this system, and I don't want to have to make her boyfriend (who asked me to do the upgrade) pay the extra for the soundcard when it SHOULD be working.
There doesn't seem to be much information on this board, through a Google search. I guess it's not a really popular board among DIYers since it's low-end intended. I don't really expect there to be too many people reading (and still fewer who've managed to make it to the end of this post), but if anybody has any ideas, I'd appreciate it. As far as I can tell, this is just some stupid problem Windows has with the on-board VIA audio and its drivers (which I did make sure were updated; Shuttle provided the latest version on the CD, exactly the same as on VIA's site).
With one system I made a clean install of WinXP, which after I loaded the drivers worked just fine with the onboard sound (though it took me a while to figure out that unpowered speakers are not usable with this board).
With the other system I was upgrading someone's computer, and didn't want or need to do a complete wipe, so I just removed all the items in Device Manager, which works just as well, and swapped everything.
All the devices install perfectly fine, Device Manager shows the VIA AC'97 (WDM) audio device as it should (though WinXP shows several more devices, but it always seems to do that compared to Win98). However for some reason, the Multimedia Properties dialog in Control Panel won't properly work with the device, so there's no sound functions. The VIA chip is listed only as a "Game Compatible Device" and then there's the modem wave device which is due to the voice modem installed. Selecting either device won't allow the "Show volume control in the taskbar" box to be available. Even if it did, I'd wonder why it won't list the VIA chipset and just shows the Game Compatible Device.
So I did pretty much every combination of stuff I could, and my roommate had done some other things before bringing it back to me (as he'd taken it to the person's house to set back up). If we run the Add New Hardware wizard, it detects a SoundBlaster Pro compatible device, which is fine as the BIOS for this board has a setting to enable such a thing. If we enable that, we can get the device to show up properly and the volume control works, but sound still won't output through any programs in the OS (but my roommate claims that they got a CD to play directly from the CD drive, but I wasn't there to see this and didn't attempt to duplicate it). I tried disabling the SoundBlaster compatibility in the BIOS, as well as removing the voice modem just in case that was an issue. If I remove the voice modem, the Multimedia Properties dialog lists that there are no audio devices at all, even though Device Manager shows the VIA audio still.
I know it's not an issue with the speakers, since I've used 2 sets as well as a direct line to my system's line-in port. It's also not a hardware failure on the board, because I connected the hard drive from this one to the other system and booted it, and it detects everything the same but still won't play any sound.
As of now, I've just put in a SoundBlaster PCI 128 and disabled on-board sound completely, but I really wish I didn't have to do this, as the on-board sound is completely adequate for the person using this system, and I don't want to have to make her boyfriend (who asked me to do the upgrade) pay the extra for the soundcard when it SHOULD be working.
There doesn't seem to be much information on this board, through a Google search. I guess it's not a really popular board among DIYers since it's low-end intended. I don't really expect there to be too many people reading (and still fewer who've managed to make it to the end of this post), but if anybody has any ideas, I'd appreciate it. As far as I can tell, this is just some stupid problem Windows has with the on-board VIA audio and its drivers (which I did make sure were updated; Shuttle provided the latest version on the CD, exactly the same as on VIA's site).
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