mystery no sound

[lhooq]

I'm friggin stumped.
I built a system for a friend with a Soyo 6VBA133 board and a celeron on a slotket. (by the way - be careful, some of the slotket cards can freak with that board/VIA133 chipset).
The long and the short of it - couldn't get sound off the sound card, no matter what one I used. From a cheapo Yamaha-compat to a Live!Value - no dice. Win98 recognizes all cards and all appears to function from a system viewpoint. But no sound.
I feel bad. He should get to enjoy the bounty of internet multimedia. So, I tear apart my own system, with a Soyo 6BE+ board and an Intel BX chipset - which I know has worked with any sound card I've installed (again, from an Aztech 16 bit to a Live!Value), and slowly re-build the system with his and my parts to troubleshoot this problem. Again, no dice. This problem is independant of sound card, processor, mainboard, and video card. The only parts left to switch are modem (whose wave properties I have disabled, lest there be any conflicts) and - shudder - hard drive. The HD is a Quantum Fireball. I have re-installed Win98, tho not as a clean install.
Hardware Manager has no conflicts.

Does anyone have any clue why I can't get sound?

thanks.

Ian Davis

[tinwindow]

I know this may sound too simple but have you tried the volume control ?
When you go to sounds in the control panel and click the preview does the sample sound look as if it is working ?
Or have you checked the mobo setup using the delete at start up and looked to see if there is a sound control control switch ?
TW

[daverme]

I recently put together a system with a mobo that had on-board sound (BX chipset, Yamaha DX(?) sound chip). At first, it seemed as though I was getting no sound. I was using a pair of old, super-el-cheapo $10 Labtec speakers. When I plugged in my stereo system, voila ... SOUND. That board is now in my daughter's PC, using the on-board sound with a set of new, decent, speakers, and is working just fine.

So maybe TW is right, it's just a volume thing. Also, does this mobo have on-board sound and does it need to be disabled to plug in another sound card?

[lhooq]

thanks for the responses, but I've covered that ground several times. Neither mobo that I've tried to solve this with has had on-board sound or video. And my output speakers have varied from 10 buck amped speakers from radio shack,to directly going into a stereo system. Nada. And yeah, the sound manager in Win98SE has been checked time and time again. Vols up, no mutes checked. This is so weird. I suspect now that the problem might be isolated to the hard drive or current OS installation. Can anyone suggest if or how or why this might be true?

Ian

[tinwindow]

Ian
If the sound card works in another machine you may have a problem with the mobo.
I do not see why the OS or HDD would prevent sound unless there is a conflict or bad driver. Check the mobo paperwork to see if there are jumpers that need set.
TW

[Beemer]

One more simple thing to check would be if you are using the correct device in your Multimedia icon of the Control panel.

Cheers!

[lhooq]

again, thanks for the ideas.
The problem is independant of the motherboard, because I'm using "his" (see original post" MoBo as we speak with my Live! Value, and the sound works great.
Yeah, I figure it's a sound card issue or a driver issue. . . but try as I might to switch cards, refresh drivers, triple check jumpers on "plug and play" components (yea, right) - nothing seems to make a difference.
Again, any bizarre suggestions are very welcome.
Ian.

[tinwindow]

Idea ?
Trade Sound Cards
If Live works on his.
And Yours will work with any sound card.....
Other than that I am stumped...
TW

[Beemer]

Get into Safe Mode and Device Manager. Locate your sound card within the devices and blow it away. Scroll down to System Devices and blow away your PCI Bus. Blowing away the bus will automatically redetect and configure your pci devices. This is an easy way of configuring IRQ's.

Cheers!