My old hard drive had some problems relating to ME hanging on shut down. Some areas were apparently effected and it was no longer able to boot up. I installed an old hard drive into the machine as the master drive and was able to access the origninal drive fine as the slave drive. But when I installed ME on the master drive it will not pick up the sound drivers. It was working fine before this on the original CD. I have tried the drivers that are on the cd that came with it and have tried downloading drivers. In device manager I have three things marked with exc. points- PCI card, PCI comm device and PCi ethernet controller. If I select PCI comm device and try to add the drivers from my cd to it, it says drivers not found. If I go to add new hardware and select creative sound blaster then have disk and select the proper driver, everything looks like it is working but no device ever shows up in the sound area or under other devices. I did restarts here too. Under the sounds and Media ico when I click on one of the items, asterisk for example, the triangle for the preview is shaded out and not accessible. Oh and I wiped my old drive today too to make sure that having Windows loaded on both drives wasn't causing some sort of conflict but that didn't do anything either. My motherboard is an AMD thunderbird with onboard sound card. Any suggestions?

AMD Thunderbird is a cpu type. Your board may have labelling on it like that, but that doesn't tell us what make and model of mboard it is. E.g. Hsing Tech, who retails their mboards as PCChips models, may have oddball labelling on the mboard like that. Look on the mboard to see if you can find an obvious model number and possibly the maker, often printed in large characters between the slots or in the middle of the mboard. OR - If this is a brand name system model, tell us what the brand and specific model number is - that is usually found on the outside of the brand name case somewhere. If you can't find a model number (e.g. if the mboard was made by Hsing Tech, there is no model number)....... If the motherboard is in a working system, we need your bios string to be able to identify your mboard and/or computer. Go here, download BIOS AGENT. Run BIOS AGENT to find your bios string. - here's the link that downloads Bios Agent http://download.esupport.com/biosag... Tell us everything Bios Agent finds, and include any dashes, etc. The onboard sound must be turned on in your bios Setup pages. The CD that came with the mboard or the system should have the proper Creative Soundblaster drivers on it, providing you chose the right chipset drivers if there is more than one choice, and you chose ME or 98SE drivers or 98SE/ME drivers - 98 drivers are different and won't work with 98SE or ME - If your Creative chipset is PCI 128, there are several different possible chipsets, and each has a different set of drivers, so randomally trying PCI 128 drivers downloaded from the web will not necessarily find you the right drivers - find the Creative chipset on the mboard and the model number printed on the main chip - that's which chipset you need to get the drivers for, and depending on which regional Soundblaster web site you go to, not all possible PCI 128 drivers are available on all sites. "My old hard drive had some problems relating to ME hanging on shut down." Shut Down problems are often caused by the drivers for the mboard's main chipset not having been loaded. You must load the drivers for the mboard after Windows Setup has finished, particularly the main chipset drivers, whenever you load Windows from scratch, so that Windows has all the proper drivers for and information about the mboard haredware, including it's ACPI support which includes how Shutdown, Hibernate, and Standby are to be handled by Windows. The main chipset drivers are always on the CD that comes with the mboard, but they may be a lot older than the newest ones available. Mboard makers and brand name system web sites often do not have the main chipset drivers listed in the software downloads for your model - in that case you must get the main chipset drivers from the maker of the chipset's website. " If I select PCI comm device and try to add the drivers from my cd to it, it says drivers not found." ME and previous sometimes screw up which drive letter is assigned to the CD drive you have a CD in, especially when you are trying to install software or drivers. Make sure is is looking at the right drive letter, and/or browse to the location the drivers are supposed to be at after the initial drivers not found or similar message. Also, Windows is looking for an *.inf file - if you point windows to a location, or browse to a location, that location must have an *.inf file that shows up, and that *.inf file must have something in it that indicates it is what Windows is looking for. E.g. if D is the drive letter of your CD drive, ME won't find drivers if you just point it to D:\ if there is no suitable *.inf file there in the root directory - you have to point it to the proper place on the CD - such as D:\drivers\sound\ME. Some onboard sound or sound card drivers, and many other drivers for other devices, will not install properly if you just point Windows to where the proper *.inf files are. If there is a sound drivers Setup or Install program on the CD that came with the mbord, or in downloaded files you got from the web when the contents are unzipped or expanded if the download doesn't automatically run Setup or Install of the drivers when you click on it, use the Setup or Install program instead of having Windows find the *.inf files. If you have already tried having Windows load *.inf files and the device shows a problem in Device Manager, Remove it or un-install it, then run the Setup or Install. "Some areas were apparently effected and it was no longer able to boot up. " Check your hard drive. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... If the hard drive does not pass the tests of the drive itself (e.g. a lot of bad sectors or bad Smart errors reported) , it is physically failing, and you need to use another hard drive. If the diagnostic finds nothing wrong with the hard drive itself, any operating system related data errors it finds on the hard can be fixed. Failing power supplies are common and can cause your Shutdown symptoms. Check your PS. See response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...

You need to go to Device manager and remove the sound entries and then reboot. When Windows finds new hardware you need to supply the correct driver for it. You may need to expand the path on the driver disk until the OK button is not greyed out.

I went into the bios and the onboard sound was on disable. I enabled it but that didn't help. Under device man. the only things under sound are a midi device and a joystick. Both loaded properly. I removed those anyway and the three previously mentioned items that had excl. marks. Again they did not load properly when I restarted the system. The model # on the motherboard is k7s5a.

Try removing the sound devices that are listed in Device manager and then rebooting. You WILL need to have the drivers available. If you don't have a CD then you can download the drivers from the ECS site. The version of the MBoard is important with that model as there wer at least 3. Look on the MBoard usually near the edge. Should say ver. xx. Below is a link to the ECS site. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Do...

It is ver 3.1. othehill I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be looking on that site. Nothing stands out about audio and when I go to motherboard it is listing socket types and nothing about the k7s5a or version.

There are drop down menus at the top left of that page. You choose Motherboard for the first, Scoket 462 for the second, and K7S5A or D7S5A pro. Not sure which you have. The link below is for the regular verion 3.1. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Do...