Realtek AC'97 Hi Def blah blah - Not Working.

[Naph]

It technically does. I test the speakers by clicking on them in the SOUNDMAN control panel and it does the little jingle pronouncing that 'it works'. But all other programs (except games) don't play sound, not even the alert sounds in Vista SP1.

What I found strange was that in Winamp, when I try so select 'Speakers (Realtek High Definition-)' as my output, I get a message under status:

Not active.

Total time played: -6:-25:-41.-82

I've installed the Vista Codec pack and _tried_ to install the 'latest' drivers for my M3A but vista keeps telling me that the manufacturer is unknown. When I click "Install this feature anyway" it waits for a while and displays the message again, and no visible change on the installation... What the shit.

I beg of HL2.net, show me an answer. There's probably two ways of dealing with this, turning off the manufacturer notice or a way of 'activating' the output.

But what pisses me off the most, is that I've made it work before, installing normally. It just doesn't want to work this time around

 

[Asus]

Have you tried a different version of the realtek driver (older perhaps)? Any beta drivers that they might be working on that are available?

 

[VirusType2]

you went into the control panel and set realtek as the default output device?

I would completely uninstall the realtek drivers, then install the one for your exact motherboard after rebooting.

since you say you get sound out of it, and assuming it's your only sound device, then it probably works and it's almost certainly software related. However it could be a vista issue if not the driver itself.

 

[Nemesis6]

I don't know the difference between the normal and the high definition stuff. Never got into such details with my onboard AC'97. Besides, I'm using an Audigy 2, so I think that beats it. But how much better should this be than normal onboard audio?

 

[Naph]

The installation guide (Realtek) for Vista said to delete the place holder(?) driver inside of Device Manager before installing, but what I didn't realise is that the driver was in fact, a sub menu D: This is why I hate Vista.

Instead of deleting one driver, I deleted all the said Codecs and Protocols associated with driver, output and input recognition. Thus making me reinstall to retrieve them, right now I'm in XP, but I won't be upgrading to vista until my dad presents me with the 'Ultimate' version.