Mixer Device

[Roger Fink]

I'm having a problem with an application, but I suspect it's an OS or
hardware problem, so hopefully this is the correct place to solve it.

On my W2K desktop computer, I have a program for digitally recording and
cleaning up analog audio sources such as cassettes and vinyl ("Golden
Records" from NCH Swift). At the start of a conversion, a wizard appears. In
the box where the record level is set there is a click bar, "Open Windows
Record Mixer".

But when I click the bar I get an error message: "There is a problem with
your sound hardware. You may install mixer devices from the Add/Remove
hardware wizard in the Control Panel".

Trying to follow through on the error message got me nowhere. I did check
device manager and couldn't find anything that wasn't running normally or
needed a driver upgrade, but it could be that something isn't showing up
because it needs to be installed, as the error message indicates.

I have no clue where to start on this. The sound is integrated on the
motherboard, and the motherboard spec says "Compliant with AC'97
Specification", if that is a factor.

A further problem is that the adjacent volume meter, which is supposed to
register the signal level, including the internal noise when no audio is
playing so you can set a cutoff threshold, is totally dormant.

By contrast, on my laptop the "mixer device" opens right up with no problem
at all, and the volume bar bounces around even without an input signal, as
it should.

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

[DL]

And if you reinstall this app?

 

[Dave Patrick]

Have you installed the mobo chipset drivers?


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Roger Fink]

I got lucky.

I went to the Biostar website and downloaded the chipset drivers, and while
I was at it I downloaded the on-board audio drivers as well. The chipset
installation was a near calamity, at least for a non-IT person, because even
though I had uninstalled the nVidia chipset first, after installation the
machine wouldn't boot, complete with BSOD. But I (just) managed to crawl
back from that with GoBack.

Uninstalling the audio drivers and installing the Realtek drivers is what
fixed it. I think the problem was that I had a friend install the OS for me.
He forgot to install the audio drivers and I soon discovered I had no sound.
Since I'm not inclined to complain about work done as a favor, I installed
them myself, but I did this through Device Manager, selecting microsoft.com,
or however they phrase it. That solved the problem of no sound but obviously
it was an incomplete installation.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. The chipset thing is a
sleeping dog I'm going to let lie, but if you have any thoughts on what went
wrong I'd be interested to hear them. My only thought was that maybe I
needed to take the firewall and anti-virus apps temporarily out of the boot
sequence.

 

[Dave Patrick]

Glad you recovered. The only thing I can think of is there were remnants of
other drivers that didn't play well with the biostar chipset. Had this been
installed from the beginning I suspect you'd have been set.


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect