Ok, I've been dealing with sound issues for a while now ever since I built this computer. It has Realtek onboard AC97 audio, and after all the struggle with it turning off and coming back on at its own will I finally decided I would crack and buy a sound card... but of course my curiosity got the best of me and I managed to mess something up even more before I made the purchase.
I went into Device Manager and saw under Sound, video and game controllers something named "Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver" with a yellow '!' next to it. So naturally I disabled it thinking that it was conflicting with the AC97 driver and would solve my problems.
After choosing to disable it I found that not only had my sound continued to not work, but I was now unable to go to
Control Panel > Sounds, speech and audio devices > Sounde and audio devices > Audio Tab and change my default audio device. Everything on all those tabs have been "greyed out" so I am unable to make any changes.
So I did the most logical thing and went back to the Device manager to reenable the Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver, yet suprisingly it was nowhere to be found on the list. I chose "show hidden devices" and it was nowhere to be found. I could not see it in safe mode either so I was worried that this might also prevent me from selecting my new sound card as a default device... and of course it did once I had bought the card and installed it properly.
I've downloaded every driver for the Motherboard, the Realtek Drivers, the SoundBlaster Audigy card that I bought and nothing has changed. I decided to do a system restore, but I had never actually made a system restore point before the date that I made that fatal change
.
So I did a Start > Run > dxdiag and went to the sound tab. After clicking "Test Direct Sound" I got this error:
DirectSound test results: Failure at step 3 (DirectSoundCreate): HRESULT = 0x88780078 (No driver)
I then went to the music tab to do additional tests. There I have two options under "Test using this port:". The options are:
Microsoft Synthesizer
Sound Blaster Audigy
When I click "Test DirectMusic" for the Microsoft Synthesizer option I get the following results:
DirectMusic test results: Failure at step 6 (Activating the IDirectMusicPort): HRESULT = 0x88780078 (No driver)
And when I test it for Sound Blaster Audigy I hear the sounds just fine.
So I'm kind of stuck right now. Obviously my computer knows that the sound card is installed and its drivers working properly because dxdiag tests just fine through that port. I was also able to change a few programs to use the sound blaster audigy card as their default sound port and they worked just fine. But the problem is that the Microsoft Synthesizer is still set as the system's default port, and I am unable to change that because "Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver" has disappeared from the Device Manager list, and that Audio tab under the Sounds and Audio Device window is still "greyed out".
Also, I have changed my BIOS settings for the Realtek Audio to "Disabled" instead of Enabled or Auto, and at the moment I am otherwise unable to use the Recovery Console either from the disk or as a startup option because I get some critical error saying it cannot recognize my HD. Plus I have gone through the windows update page for every update possible.
So as you can see I'm running out of options here and any help with this would be much appreciated.
In case it helps I have some info from a "Belarc Advisor" program that I downloaded while reading through information about a similar problem. Here is my Main Circuit Board and Multimedia Information:
Board: 939Dual-SATA2 1.00
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. P2.30 09/25/2006
Sound Blaster Audigy
Standard Game Port
Let me know if there's any other information you need to help solve this problem.
Thanks in Advance.