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[Taxi_Driver]

Seeing his generous offer in the suggestions section  

I used to do pc support and if this had been a customers i would have rebuilt it by now! But as its my own I would like to try to fix it first  

Ok its a Dell Laptop Lattitude L400 , got XP Pro SP2 on it.
Problem is with the sound card in it.
Boot it up and sound works fine, no problem. Trouble is i rarely reboot it.....i just shut the lid on it....so it goes into standby mode (faster to get back on this way) . So reopen lid it springs back into life.....but the sound card has stopped working.....zilch...nowt....until i reboot it again.

Im pretty certain it was fine until a MS update many months ago......since then ive had the prob.
I went onto dells site today and downloaded the sound card driver for it. Uninstalled the driver, then ran the exe that id downloaded and it re-installed it again.....exactly the same......sound card fine on a reboot but if put it into standby.....sound card refuses to work when it comes back to life.

Device manager says theres nothing wrong with the sound card and is working   But there obviously is as if i got to sounds and try to play one of the system sounds....it never finishes it....eg the play button you click on changes to the stop symbol and stays like that.....it should play the sound and then change back to the play symbol again.

Any ideas m8? Its got me stumped  

[TheBoy]

I reckon driver problem, driver not like it coming out of standby.  Try the original sound chip driver, rather than Dell's (probably quite old).

Trouble is, as you know, any corruption in the multimedia driver chain in Windows can cause problems, and nigh on impossible to repair, and often result of registry corruption in this area.  So rebuild likely

[Taxi_Driver]

I reckon driver problem, driver not like it coming out of standby.  Try the original sound chip driver, rather than Dell's (probably quite old).

Trouble is, as you know, any corruption in the multimedia driver chain in Windows can cause problems, and nigh on impossible to repair, and often result of registry corruption in this area.  So rebuild likely

Shud have said sound card is a Crystal Soundfusion CS4281 WDM

There isnt an XP driver for it.....so if i delete it and then let XP look for new hardware it finds it, but then doesnt know what driver to use  

Latest driver i can find is a win2000 one and that hasnt changed since about 2002.

I reckon your right......rebuild time.....will take the opportunity to add a bigger disk at the same time.....its only got a 10G and XP keeps whinging its running low on disk space  

[TheBoy]

LOL, I was just going to do some testing on an old L400 I had here. Well, I thought it was an L400. Turns out it was an even older LS400. Wondered why soundcard was different  

[Andy B]

.....Turns out it was an even older LS400.

Isn't that a Lexus?  

[Taxi_Driver]

LOL, I was just going to do some testing on an old L400 I had here. Well, I thought it was an L400. Turns out it was an even older LS400. Wondered why soundcard was different  

Thanks for trying  

Iirc LS400 is a 400Mhz.....my super uptodate L400 is 750Mhz  

[Taxi_Driver]

.....Turns out it was an even older LS400.

Isn't that a Lexus?  

Correct   Tho not made by Dell unless its a laptop  

[Martin_1962]

We've got a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum

[TheBoy]

We've got a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum

What, in your Dell L400 laptop? How on earth did you fit a PCI card in your Dell laptop  

I just got rid of a couple of Audigy 2's, shame as quite a nice card.

[Martin_1962]

We've got a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum

What, in your Dell L400 laptop? How on earth did you fit a PCI card in your Dell laptop  

I just got rid of a couple of Audigy 2's, shame as quite a nice card.

Aghhhh - but you can get a Creative laptop card

[supermop]

I would say use a default chip driver from the vendor's website, not DELL versions. Failing that, you should be able to get one at www.driverguide.com (think you need to register, but its free).

Repair installs also work well, which should reduce the work needed if you're gonna do a reinstall. (theres an option for it when you boot from the XP CD)

Sounds dumb, but have you checked to make sure it isn't muting when it comes out of standby?  

[TheBoy]

Sounds dumb, but have you checked to make sure it isn't muting when it comes out of standby?  

The sound driver not working - its as if the sound never ends, hence not giving the 'play' button back when testing sounds...

Repairs rarely work for this kind of thing - if its not a driver fault, then it will be registry corruption in the multimedia chain (common fault)...

[Taxi_Driver]

I would say use a default chip driver from the vendor's website, not DELL versions. Failing that, you should be able to get one at www.driverguide.com (think you need to register, but its free).

Repair installs also work well, which should reduce the work needed if you're gonna do a reinstall. (theres an option for it when you boot from the XP CD)

Sounds dumb, but have you checked to make sure it isn't muting when it comes out of standby?  

Thats the prob......crystal never made sound cards just the chips.....so didnt do the drivers for them.....i found the original driver i used when i first loaded XP onto my laptop.....tried that....still the same...so as it used to work and it doesnt now.....im hoping a rebuild will fix it......but then again i carnt remember if SP2 broke it or another update from MS....one of the two did....and may do again after the rebuild and all updates are in installed.....or i may be lucky and it is as Jaime suggests and a registry corruption and wont dont it after the rebuild  :-/

No it isnt muting.....ive got the sound icon in the toolbar and it just a speaker icon, if i open it all volumes are on max

cheers

[theolodian]

I know enough about computers to know that you're boned!  

Not going to curse you by bringing up the next trick my laptop came up with after needing to completely reinstall XP.  

[Taxi_Driver]

I know enough about computers to know that you're boned!  

Not going to curse you by bringing up the next trick my laptop came up with after needing to completely reinstall XP.  

Be the first time of rebuilding this laptop in about 3/4years......so carnt be bad i guess