Hi- I have C- Media AC97 onboard sournd card Symptoms: cannot play any sound at all Correct driver is installed there are not any conflicts in device manager it is enabled in bios Appears to be running as it should but no aduio from either my windows OS or Linux OS Troubleshooting: made sure correct drive is installed uninstalled/reinstalled drivers made sure mute was not selected anywhere made sure that c-media Ac97 is default playback device made sure my speakers are functional Everything looks normal and as it should but yet i get nothing out of the sound card Any ideas? thanks Despyz

How did you verify the speakers are working?

I might help if you list the make/model of your motherboard. Did you verify that everything is enabled in the BIOS?

Some mboard manufacturers have been reported to have the wrong driver downloads for some C-Media chips. Try going here if you haven't already done so - C-Media itself: http://www.cmedia.com.tw/e_download... Choose Drivers top left Your onboard audio can be listed under PCI Audio (available on both cards and onboard the mboard; more likely if your mboard is older) or Onboard Audio (newer mboards). Choose the one that has the same chip model number as your onboard sound chip. If you don't see a C-Media model number, some mboard manufacturers have their C-Media sound chips re-labelled to their specifications, and/or there is a label on top of the chip. e.g. PCChips (or any mboard made by Hsing Tech) does both - tell us what you see. If XP drivers are not listed, use 2000 ones. Un-install any listing for sound drivers in Add and Remove Programs before you install the drivers. If it still won't work, take a look at your mboard manual to see if there are jumpers that enable/disable AC97 sound, and if there are some, make sure they are in the right position. Some mboards come with AC97 sound, OR optional better sound - if you have the chip for the better sound, you may not have the C-Media AC97 chip.

Also CMedia is a sister company of Realtek and I have had instances where XP wanted to install CMedia, but the MoBo Manufacturer listed a Realtek version.

Hi, Yeah, have experienced what dosser says above. Sometimes have to go with what the motherboard manufacturer specifies, rather than the CMedia. Sound advice from Tubesandwires. You might also find http://www.driverguide.com a useful source once you've identified the exact driver you need from your motherboard.

XP and some sources identify many devices as having Realtek drivers - when you look at the *.inf files, they're usually the same drivers with Realtek labelling.