No "Windows" sound in Vista Business 32 SP1

[lcdsantos]

I have a PC with a Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x) mobo (GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview - GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x)). It comes with a on board Realtek ALC889A sound chipset. I have installed the latest sound driver from Gigabyte (GIGABYTE - Support - Motherboard - Driver - GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x)) but I have a weird case... The Windows events sounds are not working... When Vista starts, when I increase the sound using slide sound systray control, when some clip plays on a youTube clip... No sound! But when I use, for example aimp2 music player, or when I do the realtek audio manager sound test... I got the sound!!! I´m not sure, but I think the problem started after the SP1 upgrade. Best regards, Luis Santos

 

[johngalt]

Hi, lcdsantos, and welcome to the forums.

Did you uninstall land then reinstall the sound drivers *after* installing SP1?

 

[lcdsantos]

Hi, lcdsantos, and welcome to the forums.

Did you uninstall land then reinstall the sound drivers *after* installing SP1?

Hi John, thanks for the reply and for the welcome. Yes, I completely removed the sound driver after the SP1 install. In fact I did this after I noted the problem.

After the complete audio driver remove I reboot Vista and, in the new boot, the default Vista HD audio drivers were installed. This didn´t solve the problem. With default Vista audio driver I got the exact same problem: no sound on Windows apps the seems to address the sound requests by calling Vista procs.

Applications that seems to access directly the sound drivers works OK. I can list GOM Player (GOM software - Free, Simple, Light, It just plays! - GOM Media Player, GOM encoder) and AIMP2 (AIMP2: Home Page) as apps that sounds (literally) OK.

After this I reinstalled my mobo audio drivers (which claims to inlcude Microsoft UAA Driver), downloading the latest version from Gigabyte site. I see that Realtek drivers sucessfully replaced the default Vista HD audio driver, but without solving the problem.

It´s very weird the fact that some apps can reproduce sound and others (Vista audio effects and web browsers, IE and Firefox included) can not...

 

[johngalt]

That is a weird problem - hopefully someone can chime in on this one because you're having this with the standard Windows driver as well....

One question - what audio devices do you have plugged in?

 

[lcdsantos]

That is a weird problem - hopefully someone can chime in on this one because you're having this with the standard Windows driver as well....

One question - what audio devices do you have plugged in?

Yeah, although I´m a newbie in the forum I´m a PC user since my first 286 . In general I´m able to fix such problems myself, but this one is driving me crazy !

I have just a 2.1 speaker set. It´s a low budget Edifier X-100 (Edifier Discontinued Speakers). The set comes with a single stereo P2 plug. The sound signal goes first to the subwoofer and then is pass-throughed to the front speaker. The subwoofer it´s not a real one, as it´s not pluged into the LFE jack output.

 

[echrada]

I take it that you have selected Windows Sounds to play?

 

[lcdsantos]

Hi! I have selected windows events sound to work. But none of work. As I stated no "Windows" sounds works, including the Vista startup welcome sound.

 

[Ex_Brit]

A couple of things you could try. Right-click Computer go to Properties. Call up Device Manager at left.
Go to Sound, Video and Game controllers and uninstall your Realtek ALC889A
Reboot and let Vista reinstall it and find the drivers.

Or...

When you click the taskbar sound icon is the volume turned up as far as it will go?
Right-click that icon and open the Sounds tab. Try changing the Sound Scheme.

 

[motarola2]

try a start up repair. that has fixed some odd issues for me, one of them was no sound.

 

[lcdsantos]

...uninstall your Realtek ALC889A
Reboot and let Vista reinstall it and find the drivers.

I tried this already. Did not help. The default MS Vista drivers were installed Ok after the reboot, but the problem persisted with no change on its behaviour. After this I downloaded again and installed the latest audio driver from my mobo site. No change...

When you click the taskbar sound icon is the volume turned up as far as it will go?
Right-click that icon and open the Sounds tab. Try changing the Sound Scheme.

Yes, the sound is on. As I stated the sound works nicelly when using the the audio driver config applet test. And when using apps that looks to work "directly" with the audio drivers, as AIMP2, that uses the BASS library.

I will try it again (uninstall, reinstall, everything...) tonight. I´m currently on my job using a PC with XP and 1-core CPU and 1Gb RAM. I miss my personal PC (no pun intended) with 4-core CPU with 4Gb RAM... :D

 

[lcdsantos]

try a start up repair. that has fixed some odd issues for me, one of them was no sound.

Hi motarola2, thank for the info. My Vista DVD is the first isse, no SP1. My Vista instalation is SP1, upgraded from the Web.

Can I do the repair process in this scenario?

 

[Ex_Brit]

Slipstream Windows Vista with SP1 & Create a Bootable Vista SP1 DVD

alternative instructions, mostly the same though...

vLite: Tool For Slipstreaming Windows Vista SP1 » PCMech

Slipstream Windows Vista with SP1 & Create a Bootable Vista SP1 DVD

 

[lcdsantos]

Thanks Ex_Brit, I´ll generate my Vista SP1 boot DVD and use it in the repair process.

 

[Ex_Brit]

You're welcome. That's what I did.

 

[dmex]

Hi lcdsantos,

If you can hear sound that means the drivers are correctly installed and working, so thats not the problem...I guess you may have forgot to set the correct 'default' device for sound to use the correct output for other applications

Control Panel\ Sound\ Playback-Tab
Right-Click the Audio Device and click 'Set As Default'

Sometimes Windows will automatically set the device as 'Digital Output' and require you to set 'Speakers' as the default device, It might also help to use the 'test' option located there to determine the correct output device and then set that one as 'default'

Steven

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello all.

Brink has created this excellent, all inclusive SP1 slipstream tutorial here at Vista forums.
Please, feel free to have a look at it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/151606-vista-sp1-slipstream-installation-dvd.html




Later Ted

 

[johngalt]

I have a PC with a Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x) mobo (GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview - GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x)). It comes with a on board Realtek ALC889A sound chipset. I have installed the latest sound driver from Gigabyte (GIGABYTE - Support - Motherboard - Driver - GA-P35C-DS3R (rev. 1.x)) but I have a weird case... The Windows events sounds are not working... When Vista starts, when I increase the sound using slide sound systray control, when some clip plays on a youTube clip... No sound! But when I use, for example aimp2 music player, or when I do the realtek audio manager sound test... I got the sound!!! I´m not sure, but I think the problem started after the SP1 upgrade. Best regards, Luis Santos

Hi lcdsantos,

If you can hear sound that means the drivers are correctly installed and working, so thats not the problem...I guess you may have forgot to set the correct 'default' device for sound to use the correct output for other applications

Control Panel\ Sound\ Playback-Tab
Right-Click the Audio Device and click 'Set As Default'

Sometimes Windows will automatically set the device as 'Digital Output' and require you to set 'Speakers' as the default device, It might also help to use the 'test' option located there to determine the correct output device and then set that one as 'default'

Steven

Hmmm - that would make sense but it still concerns me that AIMP will play music.....

 

[lcdsantos]

Hi lcdsantos,

Sometimes Windows will automatically set the device as 'Digital Output' and require you to set 'Speakers' as the default device, It might also help to use the 'test' option located there to determine the correct output device and then set that one as 'default'

Steven

Hi Steven, thanks for trying help. I have already double checked this and the default playback is already correctly setted to the analog output.

Look the dialog. It´s in brazilian portuguese, but you can easy confirm this by the icons... "Auto-falantes" means loudspeakers in portuguese.

It I right-click on auto-fal... err... loudspeakers and test them, the sound works! Look the second picture, where you can see the "vu meter" sound feedback:

Icons and GUI are really a little great invention. Thanks parc.

 

[johngalt]

Gods, I am an idiot...

Santos - if you click *once* on the sound icon in the system notification area, you get a popup with has the volume level and the word mixer underneath - if you click on mixer, you get the Sound mixer - check to see if Windows Sounds are muted or not...

Muted:



Not muted:

 

[Ex_Brit]

John you're a genius, I'd forgotten all about that mixer. I'm hoping that's the answer.