Soundcard / PCI slot failure?

[Infam0us]

Hi guys,

I am currently using the M5A78L-M LX Asus Motherboard alongside a Soundblaster X-Fi Music card. It has worked like a charm for over a year now until last night when I upgraded my 4GB of HyperX to 8GB. I turned on my PC and everything booted up great first time, however the soundcard could not be detected according to Windows 7.

It was however detecting the WDM in the device manager, but with the yellow exclamation point next to it. So I tried to update the driver to see if it would work but to no avail. I tried installing the downloaded drivers I had for the card from the Creative website but it said it could'nt discover my card. So I tried an older Audigy 2 card and that was'nt detected at all either. This logically leads me to believe that its the PCI slot that is damaged, but I have no idea what could have caused this.

I've also noticed on the device manager that the Multimedia Audio Controller has the little yellow exclamation point next to it, and whenever I try to update the driver it fails, could this be part of the issue?

The only other items I have installed recently are a Xbox Controller and my Microsoft Lifecam HD-3000, the latter does have sound options which I disabled during my troubleshooting. But I fail to see why this would lead to my soundcard not being discovered by the PC properly. Please note onboard sound was disabled as I was trying to get my souncard to work.

I'm currently using onboard audio for the meantime while considering buying a PCI Express 1x Soundcard as this is the only remaining slot I have on the motherboard.

Any advice to solve this issue would be gratefully received, thankyou

 

[Surveyor]

Did you try going back to the original 4GB of RAM?

I don't know why this would be the cause of the problem but it seems to have happened when you upgraded to 8GB.

 

[Infam0us]

Sorry should have mentioned that in my original post, yeah I did. Still had the same result

 

[BuToNz]

Pretty sure if the slot was damaged in some way you'd most likely see nothing in device manager.

I'd have a shot at reinstalling your motherboard drivers, they may reset the PCI bus allowing the soundcard to function.

 

[Infam0us]

Would that be the chipset drivers? Been looking on the ASUS website and not sure what to look for.

 

[sadbuttrue]

Long shot but I've done it myself - make sure you didn't knock the sound card slightly out of its slot. If one of more of the pins lose contact you could have the issue described.

 

[Infam0us]

Thanks, it does hang a bit lose sometimes so will check it out.

 

[CyberCrow]

I had the exact same problem last year mine was the gamer edition, the only fix i found was trial an error with various drivers.

There is some generic drivers that got it working again but i can't rember the name it shows up as a blue icon in control panel, i updated my rig this year an chucked an ASUS GDX in haven't looked back.

 

[Infam0us]

Thanks for the advice everyone,

I eventually solved the problem by downloading an older Creative WDM which enabled the PC to recognise the soundcard so I can install the drivers again,