This is a 800 duron with the Via chipset 82c686A

Direct X says "the sound card does support buffer something. Sound will play for software buffer" What ever that means! I just moved this motherboard to the kids case. It worked fine for me. No problems with games. Now, it wants to crash, freeze you name it. They are running win 98se. I "think" I have the wrong driver installed, and I can't find the disk it came with. Any ideas?
The mohterboard maker is defunct. ( atrend Board # ATA-V971-SXO):confused:

Yeah. You have to install the motherboard/sound drivers for the system to work.

Via writes "Unified drivers" for their chipsets, meaning that the current 4 in 1 driver should work for every Via chipset ever made. At least that's my understanding. The URL for their download page is below:

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2

Listed at the bottom of the page are some older audio drivers including a 686A driver. Don't know if this will help, but it's worth a try.

I have tried soooooo many things. I have the newest vai 4 in 1 drivers installed, as well as the audoi drivers ( I attempted) and the system is telling me that my onboard audio is not enabled. I have enabled the legacy audio and the sound balster wiht no luck. I also enable the acpi ( what ever that has to do with anything) and still nothing.
I don't see any jumpers on the board. The board is a atrend ( now defunct, web site is dead)
ata-v971
apollo KT133
Socket A, ATX
Duron 800
256 ram
win98se
nvidia g-force mx4

I appreciate any ideas.
:eek:

I would check to make sure that you don't have a BIOS setting to enable onboard sound. Then I would go into Safe Mode, Remove all sound drivers that you installed and then install the most basic ones from the Via 4in1 and see if that helps.

Budfred

Thanks for the reply Budfred

The only setting I see are for the legacy and the sound blaster
I have used the defaults for the optamized setting and no luck.
No jumper setting either.

Just for fun, I'm formating now, and I will install the 4in1 438 version and then the sound driver from via. Ill leave the bios set to optimized and see how that goes.

I'll let you know. As always, any input is greatly appreciated.

If you are starting fresh, you might want to start with the BIOS at Default or Safe settings and then go to Optimized if it works smoothly.

Budfred

Did you ever try this (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=69) driver. :)

I want to thank you everyone for your replys. I ended up giving up and sending for repair. They haven't had much luck as of yet. The sound card started to work and then they got a vidio out of range error from their monitor. At that point I left\, and told them to call me.
Heres a question if a duron system got to hot ( the fan stopped turning for an unknown time and the system lock up a couple times before that was known)how deadly is that? This happened just after I started to work on the sound card problem.:rolleyes:

My son told me after the fact.

Well, it obviously isn't deadly since you were still able to get the thing to work a bit, but it may have damaged it in some way. I would see if you could try a compatible Duron chip and see if the system stabilizes, although after all the tinkering it may be too late.

Well it has been quite a while since I've checked in. The tech got it woking some how, but now the sound gets goofy at times, needing a restart of the system. I was woundering, if I got a PCI sound card and disabled the onboard, would that work, and fix everything? Could I be so lucky? Everything else works fine, just the sound.

Yes, that is quite likely to work for the sound problem as long as it doesn't cause some other problem. As long as you don't need really high end sound, sound cards can be found pretty cheap.

Thanks Budfred. I did get a new sound card, whjat a major improvment! Then just as I am getting ready to call it a sucess, everything died. System won't start, no beeps, no video. Hardrive led lights as does the cdrom. Nothing happens. Hard drive unplugged still zip. New card out still zilch. What did I do? It stopped working when I was putting in a game ( what else) Any ideas?

The simplest and most likely possibility is that you knocked something loose when you were putting in the sound card. Go back in and make sure everything is hooked up tight, reseat cards if need be.

Second option is that you had a marginal power supply and it died when you added the extra power requirement of the sound card. However, the fact that you are still getting some power makes this less likely.

Assuming that it is a commercial game, virus/trojan/worm stuff shouldn't be the issue, but if it is not commercial, you could be in trouble.

Another possibility is that you shorted the mobo with the install, did you smell any type of burning electrical or plastic smell???

Let us know what you have tried and what happened and we can look at other options if needed. Hopefully it is just a loose connection....

Thanks for the reply
The only cards in the system are and agp all-in-wonder 128, and the sound card. There is a hard drive and a cdrom, and 2 extra fans.
Everything is seated well. I'm not sure of the burnign smell. I did smell something and thought it was something else.....
WHat would I look for? I also cleaned the heatsink on the cpu while I was there. As I said before everything was working and then Ziltch.( system stopped responding, so I reset and here we are.

Did you clean the heatsink before the failure or after? If you cleaned it before, how did you do it? If you used canned air it is probably not the problem. If you used a vacuum or something else, it could be. Did you protect against electrostatic discharge while you were working in the case? Also, did you check to make sure all wires are connected tightly and in the right place? The wire for the CPU fan connected to the motherboard is crucial for the system to boot. And are all your fans running??

It appears to be troubleshooting by process of elimination time....