My computer thinks it has no audio hardware: huh?

[Kuciwalker]

OK, so I'm hearing music perfectly fine from WMP. I discovered the problem when I tried to start SW: Battlefront. It said "No sound hardware detected: do you want to continue?" I was like wtf but clicked yes, and lo and behold, the game produces no sound. This is bizarre. I go to control panel -> sounds and audio devices, go to the "audio" tab, and everything is grayed out completely. This wasn't the case yesterday - I know this because I was trying to mess with the sound recording device earlier (after which everything still worked, AFAIK). Everything on the Volume and Voice tabs are grayed out as well, and on the Sounds tab I cannot play the sound - the play button is grayed out. Everything in the Hardware tab says that it is working properly, however.

Someone please fix my computer

[Sava]

wut kinda sound card?

[Dis]

are your speakers plugged in? I guess so since you can hear music.

my speakers came unplugged when moving my computer around once.

as they always say: update your drivers. . in this case it would be your sound card drivers.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sava
wut kinda sound card?

SoundMAX Digital Integrated Audio.

[Sava]

try using system restore if you can't get it working again

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


SoundMAX Digital Integrated Audio.

*dies*

Fix that first.

Anyway, Start -> run and type "dxdiag"

Maybe DirectSound can't find it.

[Kuciwalker]

I fixed it! I rebooted. I forgot that I had ctrl-alt-deleted a bunch of processes on boot this morning. Apparently one of them was sound.

*dies*

Fix that first.

It serves my purposes. I don't actually care about great quality sound

[Dis]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I fixed it! I rebooted. I forgot that I had ctrl-alt-deleted a bunch of processes on boot this morning. Apparently one of them was sound.

*dies*

Fix that first.

It serves my purposes. I don't actually care about great quality sound

then you need to fix yourself first.

sound is important in games. or do you not use this computer for gaming?

[Kuciwalker]

Graphics is more important. I'm buying a new graphics card first. Plus, really high quality sound isn't that important, not when I just have two speakers.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Graphics is more important.

our children is learning - george w bush

get a job

get both

sb audidy 2 zs platinum isn't that expensive...

well worth it kuci

[Kuciwalker]

: tongue :

[Sava]

there's always identity theft

[Urban Ranger]

Sound is even less important than graphics in games, while graphics is less important than gameplay.

[Asher]

A properly done sound system makes a good game better.

I hate playing Halo/Halo 2 on a non-Dolby Digital 5.1 system, and I hate playing games with surround sound disabled as well. EAX-HD is awesome also.

What I want is the new Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi.

That chip is a monster. The SoundBlaster Live chip can do 335 MIPS (million instructions per second), Audigy can do 424 MIPS, and the new X-Fi can do 10340 MIPS.

Live can do 16 audio channels at once (with effects), Audigy can do 64, and X-Fi can do 4096.

Live had 2 million transistors, Audigy had 4.6 million, and X-Fi has 51.1 million.

The X-Fi even comes with 64 MB of RAM onboard dedicated to audio samples/processing, and Battlefield 2 is a game that can already use it.

Plus the usual 24-bit/192 KHz support, and 109 dB SNR. To put that SNR in comparison, it's two orders of magnitude higher than the iPod (quite literally 100x better )

[DanS]

What probably happened is that your sound system (decoders) is run in software rather than hardware. Kill the process and no sound. I'm surprised that your system was stable after you killed the processes.