Sound Card not being recognized

[Austinlol]

I am completely perplexed at the moment and I would love for someone to share their knowledge of computers with me. Normally I can fix almost anything that comes my way with my already obtained computer smarts and google (haha) but right now I'm lost. I recently reformatted my sisters computer and installed xp and whatnot and she said she wasn't getting any sound. So I told her to try and download her sound drivers and see if that fixed it and it didn't. I started searching myself trying to fix it and it is like the computer doesn't even recognize a sound card. I tried going into the bios to see if the sound was enabled or disabled by some chance and there isn't even a trace of a sound card in the bios so I tried doing everything that I read about and still I cannot seem to get the sound to work. It gives me errors about having the device not found and trying to restart etc etc. If anyone could shed some light or offer me some things to try I would greatly appreciate it. If this wall of text was confusing just ask me the specifics and i'll try to answer them the best I can.

Thanks.


Also the only thing I can think of at this point is possibly reformatting and using a different windows release. I'm sure this site doesn't condone piracy and I am in no way supporting it but I have my reasons so just suffice to leave it at that. The xp release I used for my sister's computer installed fine on another computer but maybe something got corrupted in the burn process... once again thanks for any possible help

 

[Tmagic650]

The motherboard has on-board sound. This is in the bios under something like "PCI Devices". It is not uncommon for this to fail over time. Install a simple PCI sound card and disable the on-board audio device

 

[LookinAround]

I recently reformatted my sisters computer and installed xp

1) But are you running XP SP2? or SP3 w/all updates? Run Windows update over and over again till it says no more updates and always select Custom update. Install every critical and hardware optional updates (software optional are your choice)

2) Also, as tmagic650 suggested, CAREFULLY look through all your BIOS options.

3) Make certain you've reinstalled your motherboard's chipset drivers as well.

4) If, after all the above, problem persists

• First make sure all your devices are connected and powered on
• Click Start->Run, enter: msinfo32. Click the + sign next to Components to expand it
• Click Problem Devices. Anything appear?
• If yes, click on it, Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy it, Ctrl-V to paste into next post