Vista can't see any sound cards

[bruce56]

I dug out an old PC from my wife's former business. It has Vista home premium 32-bit. Sound was not working. Device manager showed no audio devices.
I went into BIOS and disabled the onboard sound chip, and plugged in a PCI sound card. Booted Vista, and it did not detect new hardware. So next I tried a different sound card in different slot. Yet again it does not see the sound card.
I went back to BIOS and disabled LPT, COM, ethernet, IEEE1394 and IDE controller and rebooted. BIOS did list a multimedia device in PCI-7, which I presume means the sound card. I put one of the sound cards in another PC to verify that it works.
Board is Asus P5AD2. I found in other forums that Windows Vista and 7
have hassles with onboard audio, but why would it also snub sound cards?
I can't imagine a hardware fault would cause this.
BTW the BIOS version is the newest.

 

[Paul]

I dug out an old PC from my wife's former business. It has Vista home premium 32-bit. Sound was not working. Device manager showed no audio devices.
I went into BIOS and disabled the onboard sound chip, and plugged in a PCI sound card. Booted Vista, and it did not detect new hardware. So next I tried a different sound card in different slot. Yet again it does not see the sound card.
I went back to BIOS and disabled LPT, COM, ethernet, IEEE1394 and IDE controller and rebooted. BIOS did list a multimedia device in PCI-7, which I presume means the sound card. I put one of the sound cards in another PC to verify that it works.
Board is Asus P5AD2. I found in other forums that Windows Vista and 7
have hassles with onboard audio, but why would it also snub sound cards?
I can't imagine a hardware fault would cause this.
BTW the BIOS version is the newest.

Use a Linux LiveCD, or some other alternative OS scheme,
to test the hardware with.

Some OEM machines (Dell/HP/Acer/Gateway) come with diagnostic
software. Which you could also attempt to run. I don't
really trust such software all that much, but it's another
alternative if you don't like the idea of a Linux LiveCD.

You could also use a hardware listing utility like Everest
or one of the other ones, to see if the card is detectable
as a bus decode. See if the VEN/DEV value can be listed,
as proof the card is present.

I had one card, where the card did not sit down fully in the
PCI slot, and a pin on the bus ended up disconnected. Everest
reported the VEN/DEV number, and one bit of the number was
in error. And I could tell immediately, it was a mechanical
problem.

There have been a couple of cases, where a Creative SoundBlaster
PCI card, actually *burned* two pins in the PCI slot. Probably
some sort of 3.3V versus 5V powering issue. Now, that doesn't
happen too often. What you can do in a case like that, is plug
in a USB2 PCI card and test that the slot works and the USB2
ports work. No driver should be needed for that (the Microsoft
driver should install the USB2). You can probably dream up
a means of testing the PCI slot, to determine the slot is
still working properly. Use a different card type (USB preferred,
a NIC card if that is all you own).

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

Board is Asus P5AD2. I found in other forums that Windows Vista and 7
have hassles with onboard audio, but why would it also snub sound cards?

Locate and download the drivers for that particular MB. I usually
spend some time, at that stage & when physically building the
computer, with the OS and CD resource disc that comes with the MB.

Video (onboard if it has it)
Sound (ditto)
Network adator
Chipsets

Inspect each as I install them, get an idea of what and how much is
going on the HD for what's delivered.

Have a couple high-end ASUS soundboards on my systems now, but they're
PCI-slotted soundboards and some of the best.