How can you get sound on your computer when the control panel says that there is no audio device?

Answer 1

Bummer, sounds like yo need to install a device driver for your soundcard.

If you have a brand name PC you can probably get it from the manufacturers website. If you don't then you'll need to find out what model soundcard you've got. Download Craig Hart's PCI32 diagnostics to find out.

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The problem probably started due to driver incompatibilities. I had a similar one when I installed a new graphics card and updated drivers.

Start up your computer and go to your BIOS (hold down the key to go to 'Setup').

Go to Onboard Audio and switch from Auto to Enabled (or perhaps viceversa).

This is what worked for me. Credit goes to the good people at the Nvidia forums. Good luck.

Answer 2

If you really don't have a soundcard, you can pick one up at any electronics store, theyre usually pretty inexpensive. Most likely you will need a PCI sound card, which is good because most likely you wont find anything but PCI sound cards. Unless your machine is extremely old (we're talking early 1990s old) that's what your machine will require.

Once you've attained the card. Open up the computer case (with the system turned off & unplugged of course). Find an available PCI slot (usually white) there will be 2 or 3 of them there, but maybe only one. Remove the backing plate adjacent to that slot (itll only have one screw, remove that & it pops out). And slide the soundcard in, presto! When the computer boots it will ask for drivers, just give it the disc that came with your soundcard and you should be in business.

Having said that, it it much more likely your machine already has a sound card, as almost all motherboards come with one built-in these days. Most likely the sound card has either been disabled in BIOS for some reason, or your OS just doesnt have proper drivers loaded for it.

Heres how we deal with the 'disabled in BIOS' problem. Re-boot your machine and press F2 like mad during the startup process. (sometimes instead of F2 its F10, del, alt-F2 or others, your machine should hopefully say how to enter the setup menu during the startup process). Once you find your way into the BIOS setup menu, browse into "integrated peripherals" and find the options for 'onboard audio' or some such. If it says disabled, enable it. And youre done.

Most likely you did that & it was already enabled. Either that or you enabled it & it still isn't working. That's where we need to go to the final and most likely cause of your problem 'sound card is there, but OS doesnt have drivers'

First you must know what sound card drivers youre looking for... for that i direct you to the wikianswers page "How do you find out what sound card you have?" linked below.

Then simply Google around for your soundcard chipset & download the drivers. Once those are installed your soundcard should start working.

Answer 3

Maybe you should install the audio driver for your computer. The motherboard of the computer always include a support CD which contains drivers for audio, graphics and ethernet protocol. If you have a sound card, install the driver on the CD which is included on the sound card.

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That would indeed be a possible fix. After all, the computer might indicate there's no audio device if there is no audio device (duh) or there are no drivers for that device.

Another possible problem is that there are conflicting devices/drivers.

Go to your BIOS (restart the computer and hold down the key to enter 'Setup').

Switch the Onboard Audio setting from Auto to Enabled (or perhaps viceversa).

Credit goes to Nvidia forums if that works. Good luck.

Answer 4

well if its a windows xp, vista, or windows 7 operating system you can search for the system restore usally found on the system icon on control panel and as long as the system restore is turned on and it worked before you can use system restore to roll back the computer to an earlier date that the audio device accully worked, If this does not work and you are sure it worked on that date then the hardware is bad, If you do not have system restore you can go into device manager, uninstall the device, and go to the device manufacture website and download and reinstall the driver if it is not intergrated into the motherboard then the device is in a PCI or PCI-E slot and is probally a soundblaster, If the device is intergrated you can find it at you computer manufacture wesite and just use the service code.

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I had a similar problem when I installed a new graphics card. What happened is there was a conflict between the device drivers.

Go to your comp BIOS (hold down the key to enter 'Setup' when you restart).

Switch the Onboard Audio setting from Auto to Enabled (or maybe the other way around). Or you might need to Disable it.

Good luck. Credit goes to Nvidia forums if it works.