I bought a biostar NVIDIA nForce 520LE from Newegg on monday, and have been having some trouble getting the onboard audio to work. I have installed the audio drivers, but the hardware is not being detected. what should i do?

First you have to make sure that it's enabled in BIOS, though it should be by default.
Secondly, are you loading a new image of the OS or using old HDDs?
If you are using old disk drives it is possible that you may have been using an addon card that is still in the device list that is conflicting with the on-board audio drivers.
Open Device Manager and look at sound options, as well as any others that have "!" beside them. Uninstall them then reboot to allow for a new device lookup.

Gerritt

Okay, I checked bios to see if the audio hardware was enabled... it was. I am also using a brand new disk drive for the installation... XP pro. There is a pci device with an "!". The only thing i have plugged in to any pci slot is a wireless nic (and it is configured and working). I installed the driver that was included with mobo (the one on the cd). I uninstalled, rebooted, and reinstalled the included driver. nothing. i cannot get it to detect the audio hardware.

Is there a way to trick xp into finding the audio hardware? I think the problem is that windows just cannot find the integrated sound card.

So, let me get this straight: does the audio device appear in the device manager or not?

The sound device does not show up in the device manager.

My guess is the audio chip is damaged. Perhaps you should return it to Newegg for replacement.

I think the problem is with xp, and not the hardware. The installation cd was able to detect it...

When "hd audio" is enabled in bios, the driver is available in the "auto-run" of the mobo install disk.

I disabled "hd audio" in bios, the driver does not come up (i assume because "hd audio" is disabled, and it cannot detect it).

does this make sense?

Since it is detected by the auto run, it should be possible to get xp to detect it.

It may not appear where you'd expect it to in the Device Manager so expand them all and look for anything suspicious (maybe XP auto-installed a driver and did the wrong one). You should leave everything audio-related enabled in the BIOS until you can sort out what's wrong.

there is a random pci device that i cant figure out what it is.

well, if it turns out that it is faulty, i will just drop a 20$ card in and be done with it. shipping alone probably costs 8$, plus the hassle of taking mobo out etc. it's not worth rma -ing it for onboard sound imo. i wish i hadn't sold my old creative card...

Guilty-Spark said:
Integrated audio is usually on the PCI bus so it appears as a PCI device. You need to install appropriate drivers for it. What is the model of the motherboard and what OS are you using?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138077
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/content.php?S_ID=159
win XP pro


edit: add biostar website

I downloaded the driver on the biostar page, but it took <1sec to download. maybe there is a problem with it. i found the same driver on another site and am getting it now.

1)I have gone to device manager,
2)right clicked "PCI Device ?!",
3)selected "reinstall driver" wich opens "hardware update wizard"
4)selected "no not this time" so i could "install from a list or specific location"
5)selected "don't search. I will choose the driver to install."
6)window comes up to ask hardware type.
7)selected Sound, video and game controllers, and all that comes up are various game ports.

i have already done the installation of the driver (specifically by running the "setup" file downloaded from the biostar website). It does not associate with the actual hardware.

I have also installed "Realtek High Definition Audio" by the Add Hardware wizard, and got "The software for this device is now installed, but may not work correctly. This device cannot start. (Code 10)"

Guitly,
I have also installed "Realtek High Definition Audio" by the Add Hardware wizard, and got "The software for this device is now installed, but may not work correctly. This device cannot start. (Code 10)"
So, what I'm seeing, based on this and some past post is that you've got some driver or resource conflicts. If it "may not work correctly" it means you have something else loaded that is in conflict, or that the DMA/IRQ configurations are out of skew, OR that you are using the wrong version of the driver.
Now most MBs come with XP drivers. Some are "authorized" and some are not. Have you made sure that you CAN install unsigned drivers? Can you minimize the assigned IRQ/DMA setting issue by removing some other cards in your system?

Gerritt

Guilty-Spark said:
I tried to find drivers too and came up empty handed on the web. At this point, I think I would try the "Driver and Utilities CD" that came with the motherboard.


Edit: There is two:

NF520-A2 6.x
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/driver.php?S_ID=159

NF520-A2 SE 6.0
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/driver.php?S_ID=308

The driver should take a lot longer than one second to download. Make sure the downloaded file is the same size as what they say it should be on the site.

Ford,
The Realtek drivers can be a bitc...bummer to locate, especially if you are doing it for a 64 bit implementation, or anything newer than Win2k.
They're out there, but it is a bummer trying to find the correct combination for XP, XP/SP1/SP2/etc or VISTA. Don't even get into the 64 bit drivers...but they do exist!
I think I had to go through NVidia, ASUS and REALTek sites in order to find the drivers that worked for what I had running about 8 months ago....ewwwwh.

Gerritt

Yeah, I know. I try nForce first but, lately, NVIDIA hasn't included audio drivers with their suite. The next place I look is the motherboard manufacturer. Most of the time, they have the right drivers but if they don't, I go straight to Realtek. The last place I check is like driverguide.com or simple Google searches for the model number of the chip. Usually the motherboard manufacturer is the best bet.