Hello, I purchased an eMachines t3958 not long ago, which came installed with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. I recently reformatted, and installed Windows XP Pro as I needed several features it offered which home edition did not. After reformatting, my sound no longer works. I've tried installing the drivers for my motherboard, as I have on-board audio, from the intel website. My motherboard is Intel Celeron D845GVSR, and ive tried the most recent drivers (Realtek AC97), but when installing the driver the computer hangs up on the file "RtlCPAPI.dll" and then it restarts the computer automatically. It does not finish installing the drivers, and in device manager it says the device has a problem. The device does have a yellow exclamation point next to it in device manager, seemingly having a conflict. I ran msinfo32, and it showed a sharing/conflict between the audio and SMBus controller, as they both use IRQ 3. I tried disabling the SMBus controller, but still couldn't install the drivers successfully. Next, I went into the BIOS and disabled all features except for the audio, and still could not install the drivers. Also, I do not have a restore cd which contains the driver, though I feel this problem is more related to the conflict issue than the driver files. I am unable to change the IRQ setting for the audio and the SMBus controller, so is there anything I could do to resolve this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

When motherboard devices are involved manufacturers (like Intel) usually recommend getting drivers from the PC manufacturer. Have you tried the emachines web site or tech support? Terry

Yep, I contacted eMachines and they did not have any answers for me. They simply stated that they do not support Operating System changes, fabulous tech support eh?

I tried deleting the SMBus controller and the Audio controller, restarted to install them and after beginning installation of Realtek Audio Drivers I got the following blue screen of death: "A problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer. If this is your first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters. Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode. Technical Information: *** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xc0000005, 0xEEA32460, 0xF8989AA0, 0xF898979C) *** *** portcls.sys - Address EEa3246D base at EEA32000, Datestamp 41107FB ***"

It was suggested elsewhere to update my BIOS, however when I attempt to update my BIOS it says that I am attempting to update to a BIOS that is not for my system. However, I have physically verified that my Motherboard is an Intel Celeron D845GVSR/D845EPI but when I try to use the BIOS update from here http://support.intel.com/design/motherbd/sr/sr_bios.htm is doesn't work.

What a strange problem and I have never heard of an irq conflict in XP. Did you know you could have simply done an upgrade to Pro from Home? This just plain sisn't worth the effort why not turn off onboard audio which it sounds like it croaked anyway, and get a pci card for sound.

Sounds like that's what I'm going to have to do, heh... not having any luck.