Inspiron 6400 soundcard not being picked up?

[Immatoity]

Hi

Gave my old lappy to my nephew but decided to wipe it and reinstall xp for him prior..

anyway... integrated soundcard (audigy thing with sigmatel driver) is now not picked up ( ie says no soundcard)..have tried dxdiag

have been onto dell support with service tag and downloaded the drivers etc.//

been into bios to ensure onboard sound enabled..it is..

even spent a couple of hours re installing xp again but still nothing.. It worked fine before..

device manager has several "yellow exclamations" - namely 4 or 5 "base devices" which I have no idea what they are and one pci device..

It seems I might be looking at having to buy him a soundcard which I really dont want to do considering I know it was there and working..

ps warranty with dell has expired..

[Van Nugent]

Get its drivers here (http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=INSPIRONI6400/E1505&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=) and please make sure to install the drivers for all hardware then the yellow !'s will go away.

[Immatoity]

cheers van nugent..pretty sure I have installed all those.. the problem being..

when I try to install the soundcard drivers it errors out saying "no audio device found".. so it cannot install the drivers as it cant find the hardware

[Van Nugent]

When you check the Audio drivers from my link, you would see there are 2 drivers, one from Creative and the other Sigmatel. Similarly, my VAIO uses both Realtek and Sigmatel for HD audio. I'm not sure about yours but please try them both.

[Immatoity]

cheers mate i have tried both... :(

[Van Nugent]

One thing you can try is to extract each driver to its own folder using WinRAR or WinZIP. Open Device Manager, doubleclick on the audio device that has a yellow ! to open its Properties then select Update Driver. Browse to the folder of the driver that you just extract. Do this for both Creative and Sigmatel drivers.

[Immatoity]

problem being mate the audio device is not visible in device manager.. it is an onboard device so wont be the yellow pci device...and the 4 or 5 other yellow base system devices are I am pretty sure the card reader..

[Van Nugent]

When you expanded the Audio branch in Device Manager, did you see any audio devices listed? Can you post a screenshot of Device Manager? If you have installed all hardware drivers from Dell, the card reader must be recognized also. Are you sure you've installed the correct drivers? Make sure the drivers are indeed for the model of your laptop and the OS you're running.

[Immatoity]

i have mate..put the service tag in...

i confess i havent installed the card reader thing..

will post a screenshot of device manager up tomorrow ..nephew has lappy at present..cheers for your patience so far Van :)

[Van Nugent]

Yep, when downloading the drivers, please make sure to select the appropriate OS from the menu.