PC Sound Issue

Ok I just built myself a new tower from cheapie parts, and I cant get the sound to work at all!

I have an old Sound blaster live, which windows xp reconizes and has set as the default for all sounds. This is also the 1st time I have ever had a motherboard with built in sound, which windows also reconizes but dosent have as any of my default sound settings. What this means is I have two sets of audio ports on the back of my tower. My speakers which are turned on, wont produce any sound no matter what audio port I plug them into. I also do not have any conflicting hardware according to my device manager.

So anybody got any ideas as too why I cant get any sound?

All help is greatly appreciated

did you remember to load the audio drivers located on the motherboards driver disk?

Go into BIOS. You get there by pressing whatever key your computer asks you to press right when you start it up. Like "Press <DEL> to enter setup".

Then, when you're in there, go through it looking for something to disable the onboard audio so that it won't fight with your SBLive. Probably under something like "Integrated Peripherals" or something like that.

Things should smooth out after that.

yes both sets of drivers are loaded, I probably shouldnt have done that, sadly I wasnt really paying attention to what the CD that came with the motherboard loaded up.

Ok I did that and all that happened was the motherboards intergrated sound card no longer became a selectable option. Still no sound though
The speakers and sound card worked yesterday so I dont think they are broke, and I do have my volume on, both in the pc and on the speakers, I have it set up for 2 speakers, all that jazz. There is only one other thing I can think of.

The tower came with wires to connect to the mother board so that the power switch works, the reset button works, etc well among those wires where some audio wires that I thought where just to connect to the mother board so that I could use the front mic jack and front headphones jack, so I didnt connect those at all. I guess it could be that I havent connected those wires but I dont understand why, I thought that was the purpose of the sound card, so that your sound was completely seperate from the mother board.

Anyway all advice is greatly appreciated

Have Windows use the SB Live for the audio. Per what you've said above, Windows decided you wanted to use the integrated sound. It's still set that way, even though you've disabled it.

Alternatively, just simply reinstall the SB Live drivers. That may set it as the default audio controller. Better yet, download the latest greatest drivers for your sound card from Creative and install them.

What I suspect happened is that it loaded both drivers, and unfortunately it loaded the SBLive first and the integrated controller second. Guess which one ended up in charge of sound?

you sure you don't have "digital output only" ticked.



cause unless you have something plugged into the Live!s digital port you'll get no sound at all.

Thanks everyone, you were all really helpful, but it sadly turns out that the speakers where just bad lol