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Uknown Soundcard

C

Cristatus

Diamond Member
I have a home computer that I did not build, but someone else did. Basically, what happened now is that I have formatted the computer, and managed to find drivers for everything except the Sound card. I don't know where to find the drivers for the sound car (apparently it's an onboard sound card, from the motherboard) but I tried getting the drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website, and it does not work. Now, supposedly, this onboard sound card is provided by someone else (not the motherboard manufacturer themselves) so I want know what drivers I would need for this.

Confusing enough? lol.

Thanks in advance.
 
Check out the sound chip on the mobo. Once you know what it is, you can surf the web for drivers.
-Fin
 
Good point. But, how would I know that it is that chip, out of the other ~10 chips on the mobo? Is it usually near the audio jacks on the mobo?
 
What's in Device Manager now? Open the "unknown device", quote the "location" line. That'll at least give a hint on whether it's a chipset integrated sound engine, or an entirely separate PCI chip. (Or worse, something on the ISA bus.)

Sound chips of either kind are typically found near the audio jacks, between the PCI slots and the rear end of the case. You might have to remove add-on cards to see it properly.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
What's in Device Manager now? Open the "unknown device", quote the "location" line. That'll at least give a hint on whether it's a chipset integrated sound engine, or an entirely separate PCI chip. (Or worse, something on the ISA bus.)

Sound chips of either kind are typically found near the audio jacks, between the PCI slots and the rear end of the case. You might have to remove add-on cards to see it properly.
Click to expand...

They are usually only about 1x1cm square or less. The Realtek codecs at least - they tend to have "ALCxxx" as their chip ID lasered on. Other names for onboard sound are Cmedia and VIA.
 
Even Creative/Ensoniq have been on-board - Asus often uses ADI. But mainly you find Realtek and CMedia. Even when the mobo's core logic is VIA, the sound will usually be Realtek (little antlery looking logo). Or just tell us the make and model no. of the mobo.
. If you can't finger it out, take a crisp, tight shot of the PCI slot area of the mobo and post it and we could probably tell you. Some of the various hardware inventory programs (e.g. Belarc or Sisoft Sandra) might be able to tell you w/o the driver being loaded.

.bh.
 
Ok, here's the deal.

I went to Soltek's website, and plugged in my details of the mobo model in the downloads section (SL-85DRV4-C is my mobo) and I got forwarded to VIA Arena. Over there, I was given the choice of Operating System, and selected Windows XP, then I selected Audio. After that, I was brought to screen with many different southbridges. Then I selected the VT8233A southbridge, and was all set.

I had run through the above before, but was stuck at the point where I have to select the southbridge. This time around though, I looked at the soutbridge on my mobo, and read it, and downloaded the correct one, thanks to you guys.
 
glad you found what you were looking for

as a suggestion for other folks who may have run into other unknown hardware issues, I've found Everest a very handy tool for component identification as well as usually having direct links to manufacturers download page

Everest can be found here: Everest Home

plus it's free 🙂
 
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