Problems with Realtek HD sound drivers seem to be rife across a variety of motherboards of several maes, and I had once recently so felt it might be worth posting my solution.
My PC was (is!) running XP SP3 and that I believe was the cause of the problem, as installing SP3 installs the UAA driver as well - so do some ealier hot fixes.
The solution was to disable and then uninstall each UAA driver from the Device Manage. Then I was able to install the downloaded Realtek driver. On reboot the sound sprang into life!
I believe the Realtek drive includes the UAA driver (as to the Gigabyte ones) and I doubt it has been revised since UAA became part of XP, so was unable to install.
Although so far as I could tell the PC was now fully-working, I was left with an unknown device with a yellow blob and which it couldn't find a driver for. Running Microsoft Update fixed this - it found an ATI driver to download. The PC has been rebooted and I now have working sound. BTW Microsoft Update was fully up-to-date before I managed to get the Realtek driver installed, so clearly it matters at least with my motherboard to run it again afterwards.
This leaves me thinking that if you have to reformat and reload Windows XP from scratch on one of these boards, the correct sequence is:
Hope someone, somewhere finds this useful!
My PC was (is!) running XP SP3 and that I believe was the cause of the problem, as installing SP3 installs the UAA driver as well - so do some ealier hot fixes.
The solution was to disable and then uninstall each UAA driver from the Device Manage. Then I was able to install the downloaded Realtek driver. On reboot the sound sprang into life!
I believe the Realtek drive includes the UAA driver (as to the Gigabyte ones) and I doubt it has been revised since UAA became part of XP, so was unable to install.
Although so far as I could tell the PC was now fully-working, I was left with an unknown device with a yellow blob and which it couldn't find a driver for. Running Microsoft Update fixed this - it found an ATI driver to download. The PC has been rebooted and I now have working sound. BTW Microsoft Update was fully up-to-date before I managed to get the Realtek driver installed, so clearly it matters at least with my motherboard to run it again afterwards.
This leaves me thinking that if you have to reformat and reload Windows XP from scratch on one of these boards, the correct sequence is:
- Download SP3 and write to a CD if your PC only has C:
- Reformat C: and reinstall Windows
- Install Chipset drivers from the m/board CD
- Install SP3
- Run Microsoft Update
Hope someone, somewhere finds this useful!
