Suddenly, I have no Audio in Win7 - ideas?

Ronin317

Ronin317

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This is going to be a long one, just warning you now...so in summary, Audio stopped working under W7 64-bit, despite mobo replacement.

I built a new machine in October, using the case and PSU (Thermaltake 500W) from my old machine, and of course using the old hard drives as backups in the new one.
The build included...
Asus M4A87TD-EVO mobo
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
Gskill Ripjaws CAS 7 RAM - 8gb
WD 1TB HDD (SATA 6)
ATI Radeon HD5670 1GB Video card
W7 64bit

So here's where the problems begin...the system was smooth and flawless from day one (this is like my 9th build over the years...). Overnight January 3rd into the 4th, the Thermaltake PSU died. So I replaced it with an OCZ Modstream Pro 600w. Everything booted back up fine, and worked great...except the on-board Audio. I ran through the following tests...
- speakers - checked out perfectly fine, including cables
- Uninstalled and re-installed original drivers
- tried new drivers (the mobo has a VIA audio chip)
- tested different speakers, in different ports (center channel, sub, etc) and even headphones
- disabled and re-installed devices
- checked and found no conflicts
- checked to make sure audio is enabled in the bios
- and no, it's not muted!


After this, I determined the on-board audio was shot. So I ordered another M4A87TD EVO from Newegg to replace it, and planned on RMA for the original mobo. Asus agreed that the on-board audio is shot, and issued an RMA number.

Here's where it gets odd...I got my new board, and installed it last night, flawless post, etc. Go into W7, and STILL NO AUDIO. This is a brand new board. So I repeated the process above again...testing everything. Every audio setup and troubleshooter and everything shows that audio is being played, but there is nothing coming out of the jack...regardless of what's plugged into it. On-screen EQs even show audio being pumped through. There are no conflicts or anything according to device manager, and everything seems to be in order.

I'm at my wits end...I've had no sound for 3 weeks, and the only thing I haven't tried is putting in a dedicated sound card, as I don't have an old one anywhere (there is an OLD ISA one, but I'd need PCI).

Does anyone have any ideas? I've been through the MS KnowledgeBase, Asus support forums, google searches, etc...There has to be something that I'm missing. I've debated doing a full W7 re-fresh, but that is going to be a pain in the ass, as I finally got everything installed and set up the way I need it to be.

I'm unfamiliar with the W7 registry, although it looks similar to XP...should I go and remove all the on-board audio and driver refs in the registry? Is there somewhere besides device manager to look for conflicts? This seems like a driver/W7 issue rather than hardware, unless I have the worst luck and got a defective board the second time around.
 
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Doubtful that it's a Windows 7 issue. This may sound stupid, but I don't think I noticed this anywhere in your post, but did you double check Sound properties in your Control Panel to your speakers and not something else accidentally?

EDIT: After noticing the post above, yeah, some motherboards come with their own audio config program. Though I would think you can use the general Windows one without issue.
 
[quote name='Draekon']Doubtful that it's a Windows 7 issue. This may sound stupid, but I don't think I noticed this anywhere in your post, but did you double check Sound properties in your Control Panel to your speakers and not something else accidentally?

EDIT: After noticing the post above, yeah, some motherboards come with their own audio config program. Though I would think you can use the general Windows one without issue.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I have checked out everything in the Via HD sound application, and it's enabled, etc. Even the tests through that application show the EQ as playing audio, but still nothing.

[quote name='Lawyers Guns N Money']Maybe try disabling the onboard audio in the BIOS, then rebooting and re-enabling it? Or clear the CMOS.[/QUOTE]
I'm going to try that tonight...


Thanks for taking the time to respond, guys. I'll update later.
 
Alrighty...update here - I tried disabling, rebooting, re-enabling, rebooting via the bios to no avail. I'm convinced that I either have bad hardware, or there is a conflict somewhere that is not showing up in windows. I'm gonna try one more round of troubleshooting, and then I'm gonna throw the towel in and put a $20 dedicated sound card in. fuck it.

Unless anyone else has any ideas...
 
That's really strange, even after a motherboard exchange. Any chance you got the same board back from Asus? Like maybe they received it, checked it, determined there was nothing wrong with it, and sent it back to you?

Or is it definitely a different board?

If the former, there's likely something wrong with the board that they couldn't find. If the latter, there's gotta be something wrong with something else. Maybe the motherboard is touching the case wrong and there's a short? A motherboard standoff under the MB maybe?

The only other thing I would try would be a windows re-install. Maybe it's just a freak windows issue that can't be fixed by a simple driver update/install.
 
[quote name='Ronin317']Alrighty...update here - I tried disabling, rebooting, re-enabling, rebooting via the bios to no avail. I'm convinced that I either have bad hardware, or there is a conflict somewhere that is not showing up in windows. I'm gonna try one more round of troubleshooting, and then I'm gonna throw the towel in and put a $20 dedicated sound card in. fuck it.

Unless anyone else has any ideas...[/QUOTE]

Burn and boot Ubuntu Live and see if does anything different
 
[quote name='Lawyers Guns N Money']That's really strange, even after a motherboard exchange. Any chance you got the same board back from Asus? Like maybe they received it, checked it, determined there was nothing wrong with it, and sent it back to you?

Or is it definitely a different board?

If the former, there's likely something wrong with the board that they couldn't find. If the latter, there's gotta be something wrong with something else. Maybe the motherboard is touching the case wrong and there's a short? A motherboard standoff under the MB maybe?

The only other thing I would try would be a windows re-install. Maybe it's just a freak windows issue that can't be fixed by a simple driver update/install.[/QUOTE]
It's a completely different board...the RMA one is sitting in a box on my table, ready to go back to them.

It's an interesting thought about the short, I'll have to do a check in there under it with a dental mirror. Although, I'd figure if there was that kind of an issue, it would be affecting much more than the audio.
 
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