Uninstalled myself into a corner (SoundMax/driver not found

My computer:
IBM ThinkPad X31 laptop running XP Pro SP2 DirectX 9.0c
Motherboard: IBM 2884JUU Intel Odem i855PM Intel 8280DBM ICH4-M
Sound: AD1981B chipset SoundMax Integrated Audio

So I decide to clean a few things off of my system, and I used add/remove programs to remove four programs: Civilization III, Everquest II Trial of the Isle, Crystal Reports, and Bloomba.

After that, no sound. Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices says "No audio device." Clicking on the Control Panel | SoundMax icon simply does nothing (no applet appears.)

Woops, I think. I deleted something I shouldn't have. No problem, I think. I'll just uninstall the sound drivers and install them again. Strange, though -- I can no longer find anything like a sound card in my device manager. I do manage to uninstall SoundMax through add/remove programs. I reboot. Then I try to reinstall the sound driver from IBM:

Audio Driver 5.12.01.5410
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s...ocid=MIGR-61604

I get the ugly SoundMax BMP screen and it goes okay until the end: "Driver not found! Reboot your system, then run this setup again." There seems to be no way around this message. I have tried everything I can think of and everything I can find on this board and I am at the end of my rope.

Symptoms:
- No sound devices in device manager except Audio Codecs, Legacy Video Capture Devices, and Video Codecs.
- No audio device in Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices
- Sound card driver won't install due to above error.

Things I've tried:
0. Do what it says on the error message -- reboot and try again several times. No luck.

1. Use system restore to rollback to the last save point. No luck. This does nothing.

2. reboot to safe mode and uninstall everything under audio (not much there though) and wait for windows to detect new hardware: no new hardware ever detected. Try installing sound driver again. Same error.

3. install directly with .inf instead of setup.exe -- inf doesn't appear on select list.

4. install a few soundmax driver packages suggested different places on this board. same "driver not found!" problem with every package.

5. install every IBM driver package that looks like it has anything to do with motherboard chipsets. done and all are up to date.

6. install a few intel reference packages for motherboard chipsets. just casting around blindly at this point. they all install fine and don't do anything.

7. look for enable/disable audio option in BIOS so that I can toggle it a few times. I can't find any option for audio in ThinkPad BIOS. No likely candidates under other menus either (e.g., PCI).

8. run a variety of diagnostic programs (Everest, PC Doctor) -- they all just say that no sound card is installed.

9. run dxdiag -- says everything is OK but there is no sound card. Updated DirectX to 9.0c. Install eems to work but does not address the problem.

I would say the sound card has failed except that I seem to have caused all of this with the uninstall. Please help! I am running out of things to try and I have poured time into this monster. I miss my sound!

Begging,
Christian

try sfc /scannow from start - run

http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

Just a small thought- You probably have a mute hotkey. Try toggling this & see what happens. (Shouldn't do anything, but might be a HW kill switch?)

-Leezer-

Thanks Mayet and leezer3. Okay I tried sfc and it went through the whole blue bar without telling me anything in particular. I don't know if that means it worked or that it didn't work. Then I rebooted and tried again: no dice.

I also tried the mute hotkey. No luck. Sometimes the longshot does it. To be clear, the speakers still work: I get that beep on startup and also an occasional beep -- as though I didn't have a sound card installed.

Aaarrggh aaarrrggh aarrrgggh
Christian

I also checked with IBM (this is how desperate I am) and they told me to pay $169 to reactivate the warranty on this machine and then they would talk to me about it. Aaaarrggh. I don't have $169 for this.

Christian

Next thing I spose is tiddling in the BIOS. I know you say you have checked, but try resetting it to the defaults or the optimum, you never know
Also try upgrading the BIOS (If applicable).

If all else fails, you might want to go looking for a USB soundcard (Should be able to get one for under $50 (Guess based on £ prices!)

Edit: Oh, a dopey question Are you the administrator account or a personal one? (The IBM site suggests you may have issues installing if not)

Cheers

-Leezer-

Thanks for the continued efforts. Okay, I am the proud owner of a new BIOS. It did not affect the problem though.

There is REALLY no audio option anywhere in the BIOS (new and old version). And PCI menu is just a list of interrupts or something. I am the administrator account.

How can this be so hard? Is there a way to reach the on board sound card somehow outside of the OS in order to test it? Or is the fact that the computer beeps sufficient? I wish I knew more about sound cards. Just brainstorming.

Christian

Try a Knoppix live CD.
That should have sound, but could well not Laughing

(Don't have the hardware support lists to hand)
Sounding more & more like your sound chip has simply gone. You might want to try and find a service center, as opposed to simply talking to the helpline- If this is a known problem with your model, then there is a good possibility that they could deal with it, even though it is out of warranty.

Cheers

-Leezer-

Thanks again leezer3. Okay I got the PC Doctor for DOS 2.0 diagnostic disks and there are two sound tests: internal speaker and sound card.

The internal speaker test passes fine but then PC Doctor for DOS reports there is no sound card and the sound card test is grayed out. It seems like this test should pass if the problem were a Windows driver. I am concluding that the onboard sound chip actually crapped out somehow. Is that right? A second opinion would make me more confident. I have no experience with this kind of problem.

Edit: So that means the whole uninstall thing was just an incredible coincidence, right? Is that plausible?

Blargh,
Christian

Have you tried to go to windows updates to see if there is any driver available for you? If not try that

Next it may not be the right driver you are trying to install. I presume you looked up your motherboard model and are installing what it says. If that is the case download a program like everest, run it and see what it says for your audio. It may turn out not to be the one you think it is.

There wont be an actual sound card section in device manager. It will load under the video sound and game controllers.

there should be a number of devices listed there. Please if you can paste them all in here along with your everest results.

http://www.lavalys.com/ <-- everest

Thanks Mayet. I posted all of this information in my first post. everest reports no sound card installed. I listed the scanty contents of the video sound and game controllers section of device manager in the first post as well. Not sure what other everest info you want -- all of the audio tabs are just blank (grey) and the motherboard details are in my first post (including the onboard sound chipset from the computer's specs, not everest). The whole everest report is pretty huge.

I tried windows update and it did not find anything for me.

If it was a windows driver problem wouldn't the PC Doctor for DOS tests from the disk pass? This is what I am thinking about now.

Christian

Quite possibly not
From what I can see on thier site, the latest version is V5, and your laptop is pretty (Relatively) new.
What you really do need is a decent new Linux CD, as I've checked & your HW is supported from approx kernel ver 2.4.

Starting to sound more and more like a co-incidence, but you never know!

Cheers

-Leezer-

Any luck with your problem niftyc?I was doing some cleanup yesterday and uninstalled soundmax...and i am in the same boat.tried installing the soundmax stuff and got the same message "Driver not found! Reboot your system, then run this setup again".Please let me know if you were able to find a solution. I am running xp pro on a dell400sc.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/wind...-not-found.html

follow instructions in the last post by "grendyll".

Had similar situation to niftyc, even though my laptop is an IBM T43p. After going through all suggested steps from this thread and others, sent in the machine for repair. The problem found was a bad AD1981B (Analog Device) chip forcing a MB replacement. In my case, the symptom that pointed to more of a HW issue was when you selected the .inf driver file from "Have Disk..." selection, the window was always blank after selecting ANY .inf file. After that, the NEXT tab was greyed out, not allowing further driver install.

Also, PC Doctor diagnostics indicatated "No Audio Device", and the Audio test just "FAILED" with no further indications or error codes.

Ultimately, the BIOS as well as OS just never did see any Audio device at all. I guess I just had to try everything else to be convinced!!!