Audio issue

DannyBZR

Hi there,

I have just made the mistake of upgrading to vista, I hate it so far.... I am having a problem with my sound at the minute. Everything seems fine and then if the laptop is left alone for some time then the sound just stops working. If I reboot the laptop it seems to come back then. The laptop is a Hp Pavilion dv2000 and I have tried downloading the sound drivers from the hp site and installing them but when I do the install says failure and the drivers that are being displayed are Microsoft drivers..... Anyone have this or a related problem that could help me out???


Cheers

Danny

8T8

Does it state who makes the sound chip in the driver ?

Check the audio controllers properties in the device manager.

Most manufactures have released updated sound drivers that are newer than the stock Vista ones.

Edit: I don't know if it's the same model as there are so many variations HP list of the DV2000 but if it is was a Conexant driver HP offered to download try this one instead - this is for 32-bit Vista.

Edit2: You'll need 7-Zip or WinRAR to open that archive I linked too.

DannyBZR

8T8 wrote:

Does it state who makes the sound chip in the driver ?

Check the audio controllers properties in the device manager.

Most manufactures have released updated sound drivers that are newer than the stock Vista ones.

These are the details that are provided with the drivers. Within the attached picture

8T8

Those are just generic drivers cant tell who makes the chip.

From this page which model notebook do you have ?

DannyBZR

8T8 wrote:

Those are just generic drivers cant tell who makes the chip.

From this page which model notebook do you have ?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00777214&lc=en&cc=au&dlc=en&product=3279902&lang=en

This is the link to the exact model. HP Pavilion dv2175ea

8T8

Okay according to that it is a Conexant audio chip which are not too common from the looks of it.

Download the driver I linked to in my second post at the top of this thread and extract it to a folder, now you can attempt the driver install two ways

1) Run setup.exe and see if it proceeds as normal.

2) If that fails go into control panel\system\device manager and bring up the audio controller properties and choose update driver and point the driver wizard (choose browse my computer for driver software) at the folder it should pick up the driver and install it.

If the 4.08 driver fails to install through either method above then try this earlier 3.18 driver.

DannyBZR

8T8 wrote:

Okay according to that it is a Conexant audio chip which are not too common from the looks of it.

Download the driver I linked to in my second post at the top of this thread and extract it to a folder, now you can attempt the driver install two ways

1) Run setup.exe and see if it proceeds as normal.

2) If that fails go into control panel\system\device manager and bring up the audio controller properties and choose update driver and point the driver wizard (choose browse my computer for driver software) at the folder it should pick up the driver and install it.

If the 4.08 driver fails to install through either method above then try this earlier 3.18 driver.

Ok when I try either driver from the setup.exe method, I get an error which says "Cannot find Media" or something to that affect... When I try to install using the device manager it says that I already have the most updated drivers even thought they are the generic ones... I have then tried to uninstall the drivers and intall the correct ones and by the time the hp ones get around to installing, vista has decided that it wants to install the generic ones again so the hp ones fail.... Is there any way of getting vista to not install the generic ones automaticlly...Honestly vista has me driven mad, only after a few days

DannyBZR

Just ran a program called everest and it has identified that my controller is

Intel 82801GBM ICH7-M - High Definition Audio Controller.

So I'm not sure what this means for the drivers...

8T8

Well it's not really Vista that's at fault here HP is for doing such poor Q&A on their machine and not providing stable drivers out of the box as that's their responsibility ( I do agree though the auto driver re-install is very annoying).

As for the Intel chip no that's quite not it that's the controller chip the physical layer is a third party chip which is the Conexant chip or at least should be.

The physical layer can comes from different vendors like Realtek, Sigmatel, C-Media etc.

On the chance HP screwed up and it does not use a Conexant chip try downloading Sisoft Sandra and go to the hardware tab\Buses & Devices section and have a look under the PCI buses for the audio controller and see what it says ?

Also take down the OEM Hardware ID VEN.... & DEV....


Finally bear with me and try this Conexant driver which is for other HP/Compaq laptops it seems to contain a different set of files compared to the other ones.

Also it could be the driver is not WHQL signed which is why Vista is ignoring it (generally it shouldn't if the driver is newer) in the driver wizard choose "let me pick from a list of devices on my computer" and select "have disk" & point it at the folder to see if it installs it.

There is also the possibility that some other issue is the underlying cause there is a newer bios on the HP website for your notebook version F.23 the release notes indicate fixes for speedstep and power management issues which may be related if the system goes into standby & the audio stops to function afterwards.

DannyBZR

8T8 wrote:

Well it's not really Vista that's at fault here HP is for doing such poor Q&A on their machine and not providing stable drivers out of the box as that's their responsibility ( I do agree though the auto driver re-install is very annoying).

As for the Intel chip no that's quite not it that's the controller chip the physical layer is a third party chip which is the Conexant chip or at least should be.

The physical layer can comes from different vendors like Realtek, Sigmatel, C-Media etc.

On the chance HP screwed up and it does not use a Conexant chip try downloading Sisoft Sandra and go to the hardware tab\Buses & Devices section and have a look under the PCI buses for the audio controller and see what it says ?

Also take down the OEM Hardware ID VEN.... & DEV....


Finally bear with me and try this Conexant driver which is for other HP/Compaq laptops it seems to contain a different set of files compared to the other ones.

Also it could be the driver is not WHQL signed which is why Vista is ignoring it (generally it shouldn't if the driver is newer) in the driver wizard choose "let me pick from a list of devices on my computer" and select "have disk" & point it at the folder to see if it installs it.

There is also the possibility that some other issue is the underlying cause there is a newer bios on the HP website for your notebook version F.23 the release notes indicate fixes for speedstep and power management issues which may be related if the system goes into standby & the audio stops to function afterwards.

Yah I have already updated the bios to the latest version that was on the hp website, Ill give those drivers a go later on these afternoon and see how it goes. Lost audio again this morning so the problem is still there...

Edit: when I run the the setup.exe from the drivers above the following message is displayed again: Driver installation failed: could not finf the MEDIA device for this driver.

8T8

On the off chance I Google'd Conexant and the error message you have given and found a lot of related problems accord vendors from Toshiba to HP it appears the central problem is actually Conexant's driver installer.

I also found another guy with the same notebook who cannot install the Conexant driver & again more here which is a large thread & gives the potential solution so this is a right pickle of a problem for a lot of users who have Conexant chips.

Anyway the solution is presented like this;
* Run the driver setup - it fails giving the error no media found select okay
* Proceed straight to the device manager and use the update driver wizard and use the I will pick from a list of devices option + have disk and point it at folder.
* Pick the Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045 if present and it should install.

One other item is if you haven't tried it already turning off UAC (inside users control panel) as it was mentioned that the driver setup program doesn't play nice with it and that's why the driver installer fails.

Last but not least there is talk that it is possible to use the XP driver & that works for some.

These are the newest drivers that I can see again a different file layout from HP if none of the above methods work out then this is my last play.

Now that's what they are saying in the threads & if that doesn't work for you then I'm at a loss.

If you cannot locate a solution to this what you could try is disabling hibernation support and only use standby mode for power saving of course if standby mode is also affected that nixes that.

Final option is contact HP support & tell them what's wrong it should not be like that in the first place if Vista came as the OS shipped on the notebook they may be aware of the problem & have the fix.

DannyBZR

8T8 wrote:

* Run the driver setup - it fails giving the error no media found select okay
* Proceed straight to the device manager and use the update driver wizard and use the I will pick from a list of devices option + have disk and point it at folder.
* Pick the Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045 if present and it should install.

Ok I have tried the above method, firstly I tried it with the latest drivers, 4.80 I think they have not installed, giving me some code 10 error, So I reverted back to to the previous drivers and they installed using the above method. I havent got them installed long enough to tell if they are working, they audio is working just need to see if it stays working...!! So so far so good, we'll see how it goes.

Thanks very much for all the help, it is greatly appreciated, I cant thank you enough.. Cured a lot of headaches!!!:)

I'll keep you posted on the results anyway hopefully its good news

Cheers

Danny

8T8

Hopefully it works fingers crossed.

The best way to try is to put the laptop into standby/sleep or hibernate mode as that's what the apparent cause of the audio not working is when it wakes up from sleep mode.

Also on a final item while looking at the MSKB I found this hotfix for Vista which describes the problem exactly audio stops after resume or hibernation which if the Conexant driver doesn't hold up is worth trying out.