No onboard sound in XP? works in vista! some help plz...

[Firedomain]

Hey, i have a MSI P6N SLI Platinum mobo with 7.1ch HD Onboard sound.
for some reason i am not getting any sound in xp.. there is no speaker in the tray & if i go into sound & audio device properties all the audio options are greyed out. in the device manager it shows a few audio related devices & states that there all functioning correctly... in the right click menu there is not an option to uninstall. (my 1st guess would b to uninstall em all & restart & reinstall the drivers) i have the latest realtek drivers & everything but still no sound....
when i boot up vista everything works fine..... does anyone have any suggestions for fixing this problem. i have hunted high & low & have found nothing useful so far.

Thanx in advance, FD

[DanishDevil]

Find new drivers for them. First, try Windows Update. They usually have drivers for random crap that'll get 'em working. Choose "Custom." After that, since I've owned plenty of MSI boards, install (from the CD u got with the mobo) MSI Live Update and run it in IE. Get all available BIOS and driver updates. Then, take a break to urinate and get back to us.

[Firedomain]

as i said before, i have the latest drivers, but i checked the live update anyway... im already running the latest bios & all my drivers are the latest... checked windows update... a few things, but nothing related to the sound..... still have no speaker (in the tray) & no audio....

[farlex85]

Hmmmm, thats odd. I've had that exact board (not w/ the 7.1 mind you) and I have always had only one device, for the realtek drivers. Really, the sound usually worked on my system w/o the latest drivers installed, just not as well. Try uninstalling these drivers as you said, then see if windows tries to download stuff automatically. Then go from there.

[JrRacinFan]

Have the Microsoft Hi Def Audio Bus Driver installed?

[Firedomain]

farlex85: thats what i said... in the device manager there is no uninstall option... so i cant do that.... woulda been my 1st guess.....

for some reason there's an Unknown PCI Device in the Other Devices section... i dont have any PCI devices (except my tv tuner. wich isn't in the PC at the moment & hasn't been since i reinstalled xp...... i just uninstalled the pci device & am gonna restart now & hope it detects the sound......

JrRacinFan: not really sure what that is... i simply installed all the drivers i always install & has worked everytime till now..... all mobo drivers are on & everything else works fine except the sound....

[farlex85]

Those unknown devices are usually simply the result of no proper drivers being installed for them. Thats odd you can't uninstall the drivers, I have never encountered that. I suppose you can't roll back or anything?

Have you tried to download drivers through MSI? Nvidia? Realtek? You can get the drivers from all, I had the best experience w/ that board through msi though, seemed to be better. If one doesn't work though, try the others.

Perhaps you might want to reconsider a reinstall of windows also (DOH!).

[Firedomain]

the comp just re detected a PCI Device... then got the usual "Cannot install this hardware" problem..... have tried drivers from realtek & msi & windows update... all 1s that are the correct drivers coz i've used them before.....

does anyone know how to manualy place driver files to force components to use them... the audio devices all say there working properly but none of em have a drivers tab...... not really sure where to go from here....

+ i had to install windows about 5 times during my attempts to get the dual booting working properly... all 5 times the sound didn't work.....