Sound card hell...please help!

M

Morey G.

Hello to all. First, to save time, I;me not a novice and I think I have a
fair idea of how to get things going.
The problem:

I just recently upgraded my Dell D4500 with a new sound card (Turtle Beach
Santa Cruz) and a new video card (ATI Radeon 9200). I'm running Win XP Home
SP1 on a P4 1.80GHz w/ 768MB of RAM and a CD-ROM and CDRW. I installed the
sound card first, all worked fine. I tested it, played regular audio CD's ,
MP 3's avi files, etc.
All worked well.
The sound problem started when I installed the ATI video card believe it or
not and made the mistake of using the "Express Install" mode. (I was tired,
it was late...)
ATI installed a "Multimedia Center" that hijacked all of my file extensions
from Media Player 9 and took it to it's own "File Player". Each time I
tried to play a file of any kind using Media Player I got this message:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem
with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your
computer, it may be in use by another program, or it may not be functioning
properly."

I then uninstalled ATI's Multimedia Center, but no help there...same
problem. I have now installed, re-installed, uninstalled everything in the
PC. Here's the specifics:
After I reinstall the Sound Card (via Device Manager) and then the drivers,
EVERYTHING works fine. As soon as I reboot, the problem returns.
If I install ATI's crap "Multimedia Center", everything works with it, but
not with Media Player. I have stuck the file associations to Media Player
everywhere, but obviously it's not an association problem, but a sound card
software one...at least I think so.
Any help will be greatly appreciated, I am going NUTS! I even tried system
restore and started from scratch but the problem returns on reboot.
Sorry to be so wordy, just though the more info I give, the better the
chances of getting HELP.
Thanks in advance and best regards,
Morey "silent man" G.

Dell D4500 P4 1.8GHz
768MB RAM Maxtor 80gb HDD
Lite-On LTN486S SONY CD-RW CRX160E
RADEON 9200 Conexant HSF V92 56k
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

Win XP Home SP1
 
D

Debug

Hello to all. First, to save time, I;me not a novice and I think I have a
fair idea of how to get things going.
The problem:

I just recently upgraded my Dell D4500 with a new sound card (Turtle Beach
Santa Cruz) and a new video card (ATI Radeon 9200). I'm running Win XP Home
SP1 on a P4 1.80GHz w/ 768MB of RAM and a CD-ROM and CDRW. I installed the
sound card first, all worked fine. I tested it, played regular audio CD's ,
MP 3's avi files, etc.
All worked well.
The sound problem started when I installed the ATI video card believe it or
not and made the mistake of using the "Express Install" mode. (I was tired,
it was late...)
ATI installed a "Multimedia Center" that hijacked all of my file extensions
from Media Player 9 and took it to it's own "File Player". Each time I
tried to play a file of any kind using Media Player I got this message:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem
with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your
computer, it may be in use by another program, or it may not be functioning
properly."

I then uninstalled ATI's Multimedia Center, but no help there...same
problem. I have now installed, re-installed, uninstalled everything in the
PC. Here's the specifics:
After I reinstall the Sound Card (via Device Manager) and then the drivers,
EVERYTHING works fine. As soon as I reboot, the problem returns.
If I install ATI's crap "Multimedia Center", everything works with it, but
not with Media Player. I have stuck the file associations to Media Player
everywhere, but obviously it's not an association problem, but a sound card
software one...at least I think so.
Any help will be greatly appreciated, I am going NUTS! I even tried system
restore and started from scratch but the problem returns on reboot.
Sorry to be so wordy, just though the more info I give, the better the
chances of getting HELP.
Thanks in advance and best regards,
Morey "silent man" G.

Dell D4500 P4 1.8GHz
768MB RAM Maxtor 80gb HDD
Lite-On LTN486S SONY CD-RW CRX160E
RADEON 9200 Conexant HSF V92 56k
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

Win XP Home SP1
Click to expand...

ATI have a utility at their website that cleans out all the ATI stuff
from the registry and system folders. Get that and get rid of the ATI
stuff using the utility, uninstall the sound drivers too. Now install
the ATI drivers without the MMC, now install the Santa Cruz drivers,
hopefully that will fix it for you.
 
T

Tom Scales

Multimedia center truly is lousy, so I never install it (I have an ATI 9800
Pro and an ATI 7000 in my 4550). My suggestion would be to download the
absolute latest versions from the ATI website and see if that cleaned things
up.

Tom
 
M

Morey G.

Thanks everyone. I didn't use the cleanup utility from ATI's site but I did
do a fairly thorough registry clean, reinstalled the 9200 and did NOT
install anything else, not even their control panel suite. I don't need it.
I will try their ATI utility if my next try fails.

WSZsr, I tried that. No luck. It only worked until the final reboot and
then Media Player 9 stopped playing media.

The last thing before leaping off the bridge is to reinstall the cards in
their recommended slots. Even though the network and modem cards were
factory-installed, they were NOT in the PCI slots designated in the manual.
I just finished this procedure:

1) Removed all Santa Cruz references, drivers, inf files etc. cleaned
registry with RegCleaner (from Jouni Vuorio)
2) Did same with Radeon 9200, including MMC, cleaned registry again
3) Physically pulled Santa Cruz card, rebooted.
4) Set up ATI card using XP's native drivers, works fine.
5) Rebooted and enabled on board audio in BIOS
6) Tested Media Player 9 with avi, MP3, cda, mpeg, wav files. Works fine
7) Reinstalled modem and network cards one at a time, rebooting between
each, in their recommended slots.
8) Tested everything, it all works.
9) Rebooted again, DISABLING on board audio in BIOS
10) Installed Santa Cruz card and drivers, tested, works fine with all in
#6.
11) Posted here, putting off the dreaded re-boot to see if Media Player 9
still works!
12) Contacted Supreme Being briefly, asked for some help.
13) Lucky number I hope. Signing off now, rebooting and will post back with
results.

Thanks,
Morey
 
M

Morey G.

I was tempted, but since it works fine with the on-board audio I think I'll
resist that. What I did was re-enable the on-board audio in the BIOS,
removed the Santa Cruz, and everything works perfectly! Very strange, eh?
As soon as I try to use the Santa Cruz card, software glitches. It might
even be a defective card, although it works fine until that fatal reboot.

I'm probably going to get rid of the Santa Cruz card for now, and maybe
pick up a SoundBlaster some time down the road. Whatever it was, I'm not
going to go nuts anymore over it. I just now finished installing a NEC DVD
burner, Power DVD and it works like a charm.

Thanks anyway guys,
Morey
 
P

Pat Conover

One last shot, try running the Dell diagnostics for your modem. My Sound
Blaster Live card was doing the same thing and the Dell diagnostics said my
modem needed the drivers reinstalled, which fixed the SB problem. Strange I
know, but of course that was the only thing I hadn't tried! HTH

Pat Conover
Remove *nospam* to e-mail me.
*nospam*[email protected]
 
M

Morey G.

Pat,
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, I pretty much did that when I
uninstalled the modem and moved it to the recommended PCI slot. I then had
to reinstall the drivers, and still the problem was there.
I'm chalking this one up to "some mysteries of life are not meant to be
solved"
:)
I might try Turtle's tech support during the week if I really feel
masochistic.

Again, sincere thanks to everyone for trying to help. For now, the on-board
audio is sounding good to my tired, old ears!

All the best,
Morey
 
J

JAD

Morey,

In the bios reset configuration data to YES PnP OS to NO.
WMP uses a weird technique to determine if a device is being used by
an IRQ poll. Well with ACPI this can cause anomalies.
 
M

Morey G.

JAD,
Thanks for the suggestion. Just a question, How will this affect the Plug
and Play capabilities of the system, if at all?
Thanks,
Morey
 
M

Morey G.

JAD,
Tried your suggestion. No luck. MP 9 did not open the file, no sound, etc.
Back to the drawing board.

Thanks though,
Morey
 
M

Morey G

Greetings all again. An update:

I returned the ATI 9200 to CompUSA, (they were GREAT by the way...I had the
box, packing, etc) and asked if I could upgrade to the All-in-Wonder 9600
since I have a DVD-RW/+RW and thought I'd burn some OLD VHS on to DVD. Well,
apparently somebody "up there" smiled at me because after doing the exact
same procedure for the 9600 as I did for the 9200, I got everything working
just fine. TV, CD Audio, DVD, MP3's, all files play with Media Player 9.
The Santa Cruz card is Santa Cruzing and I'm a happy camper. I don't know if
the 9200 had a hardware glitch or if the 9600's drivers were friendlier, but
all works now and except for the fact that I'm about $86 poorer than I was
before, all's well that ends well.
I want to thank everybody for trying to help, it's much appreciated.
Best regards,
Morey
 
T

Tom Scales

Glad everything worked out. The 9600 is a much better card, particularly
with teh All-in-Wonder features.

Check out www.snapstream.com

Turn your 9600 into an amazing TIVO-like box. I've given up on my VCR. I
record everything onto my PC and then stream it to my TV with a MediaMVP
(www.hauppauge.com).

Tom
 

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