Sound on XP

[austy92]

Without getting to boring with detail here is the system I built for my little brother:

MSI Ultra745 w/1800+
256RAM
80Gig HD
Radeon 7500

I loaded XP and all kinda neat toys and games before I mailed it out to him. He said he was having major problems so he formatted C: and started over. Only when he loaded XP again, the sound didn't/doesn't work.

I checked MSI's homepage (they're not so big on Support by the way) and found basic driivers for the AC'97 audio (which I would think XP can load without any help (or at least it did the first time)

He borrowed a Creative Audiology MP3 to solve the problem and now he's getting very scratchy audio (he claims he disabled the sound card on the MB)

I built this system and before I mailed it out...it screamed flawlessly. Does anyone know what he could've done to mess up his sound with two separate sources.

thanks for any input....

Rob

[chridenp]

This may sound obvious, but did he check to make sure a wire didn't come loose? Also, are his speakers plugged in at the correct ports? Does this system also have a built in sound card that may be competing with his PCI sound card....Has he gone into the control panel, system, and checked for errors?
My son's computer was doing the same thing and all it was is that two of his wires that plug into the sound card were reversed.
One thing happened to mine once...after booting up, I had no sound at all! The volume control was set very high...Then I turned up the volume on my speaker...and viola! I had sound again...I don't have a clue as to why it happened, but during the boot up, the sound just didn't come with it....
Sometimes, my mp3 software (Musicmatch) desides to become the master volume controller too...but I don't really mind since I use it all the time anyway...but that can also cause a malfunction too.