Hello. I recently upgraded my PC with a gigabyte GA-7VA-C motherboard and an AMD Athlon XP 2200. The motherboard has an on board sound card (Avance AC'97 from Realtek-ALC650). Everything seems to run well apart from the sound (no sound). In device manager there was a black exclamation mark (in a yellow circle) at the sound device. The message I receive when I click properties is a Code 10: This device is either not present, not working properly or does not have all the drivers installed. I tried almost everything. Remove the device, unistall the drivers, re-install them (either by using the CD that came with the motherboard or by leting windows find the appropriate drivers or by downloading drivers from the net) but nothing seems to work. The device does not appear to have any conflicts but I also tried to change the slot of another device that was using the same IRQ. However, windows assigned again the same IRQ so nothing changed. I have also tried to remove some devices and although the IRQ assigned to the sound card changed, there was still no sound. I finally downloaded the updated drivers from realtek's site. After I install them and reboot, the computer freezes. When I press ctrl-alt-del I can see that the program that is running is cmdninst.exe. Apparently there is something wrong there and windows cannot process this operation. I need also to mention that I disabled from BIOS, the games port because if this is enabled the computer will again freeze exactly in the same way I mentioned before. After rebooting and starting in safe mode and removing all the devices, the games port was finally installed BUT the problem with the sound remains exactly as before. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

hello try setting the jumper on mobo to enable onboard sound.

The Bios has the feature. The card is already enabled

I had the same problem with AC97 onboard sound. Tried everything , trouble shooting it with the computer tech's from company I purchased PC from .It finally came down to it being a hardware problem not a software prob. I had 2 options , box the system up and send it back , or purchase a PCI sound card , disable the onboard sound in the BIOS. I decided on the second option and have never had a sound prob since .FYI, my brother purchased a PC with AC97 onboard sound ,same thing , sometimes sound , most of the time no sound. Iam going to install a sound card for him . They are very affordable and in most cases provide better sound then the onboard type ! Good Luck Nick