Onboard sound has disappeared

[Calli]

The motherboard is an ABIT BH7 with Realtek AC 97 on board sound. It has worked fine for four years. When the music cd produced no sound while the indicator showed it playing, I first checked the speaker connectors. Although it looked fine, I switched speakers, Still no sound. I then used headphones to check at the cd player and then the sound plug in for phones; still not sound. I checked the device driver and there are no marks indicating a problem there. Then I tried to reinstall the sound driver from the motherboard cd. It comes up with an error that alcxwdm.sys can not be found but does not give an option to tell choose the windows folder where this file resides. Is the sound portion of the motherboard dead? I'd like to know before buying a stand a lone sound card.

[ski]

D/L the alcxwdm.sys file from the following link, and install it in the Windows/System32/Driver folder:
http://www.dynamiclink.nl/htmfiles/rframes/info_sys/info_a/68.htm

If no luck, then make sure the volume is turned up and it's not muted either in Windows or in the sound adapter's software.
If that's properly adjusted, and the replacement speakers and headphones are known to work, then the onboard sound adapter is probably bad.

[Calli]

Thanks for the confirmation. The file is in the correct folder but no response. With the assumption that the onboard sound is gone, it will be time to look for a replacement pci sound card. Will I need to delete all reference to the current onboard sound when I install a stand alone?

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I then used headphones to check at the cd player

If what you mean is that you plugged headphones into the front of your cdplayer and no sound came from that as a music (.cda or .mp3) cd was playing in it, I would try another cd-ROM first.

[Calli]

I tried several cd's which play just fine on my regular stereo. I used the headphone jack on each of the cd roms and the back headphone jack (at the audio input). No sound. I did try removing Realtek AC97 but when I rebooted, Windows found new hardware and reinstalled it. ??? Will this be problem after I purchase a sound card? How do I disable onboard sound?

[ski]

Check in BIOS for an option to disable the onboard sound.
If there's none, then you may have to reposition a MB jumper(check MB's or computer's documentation for instructions).
If there' no jumper, then uninstall the onboard adapter's software in Add/Remove Programs, and disable it in Device Manager.