NOOB question on sound cards

[mikemar1]

Hello, I am in need of some advice on my sound card issue. I was given a soundblaster live 24 bit card and decided to try and install it myself. it looked easy. My present system has a built in sound card.C-Media it says. I disabled the onboard card thru the bios and uninstalled the drivers. I insalled the card by switching the wire from the onboard to the new card and putting the new card in the slot. The other end I placed in the back of the cd rom.
When I boot up it says new hardware found and I installed the new software. Everything seemed to be going fine but when I played a song thru WMP it gave me a message that windows could not play the file as there was a problem with the audio card. I then reversed everything I did and it still won't play with the onboard soundcard activated. Any ideas how to solve this?

 

[old_geekster50]

Here is a link to Creative's website. It should help you install your card:

http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/...5,E=0000000000114232361,K=3784,Sxi=1,Case=obj(2538),Kb=ww_english_add,VARSET=ws:http://us.creative.com/

Sorry, the link only takes you to Creative's website. So, go to the "Knowledge Base" area of the site. There you will find help for installing your card. Simply type "install soundblaster sound card" in the "search for keyword" section; item #2 in the results area should help you.

It sounds to me (no pun intended) like you didn't remove the drivers for the on-board sound prior to installing the card.

 

[mikemar1]

Hi. thanks for the info. I did uninstal the drivers for the on board, but I think the new card is a dud. How would I go about reinstalling the drivers for the on board card again, so I can at least use that card ?

 

[bigbaddog]

You need to reactivate the onboard sound through the BIOS-just reverse what you did to deactivate it. Then restart-windows should detect new hardware and then reinstall drivers-probably from the CD that came with your motherboard.

 

[mikemar1]

I am at my wits end with this. I took my computer to get this card installed but they couldn't as the softwre is not for the card. They were also unable to get my onboard card to work. They suggested I reinstall windows so that any corrupted files would be fixed. This doesn't work. It still says I have no audio device installed. Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be fixed? I should ppoint out that I Insalled the external card and software before i removed the drivers for the old one