.MP3s won't play

bigred

Penultimate Amazing
bigred
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
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This has happened to both my and my girlfriend's PC and I know at least 1 person at work who it's happened to recently, so I strongly suspect that POS of all POSs, Microblow, is involved in this SNAFU somehow...but anyway....

No virus detected and the sound card does in fact work because it plays beautiously when you shut down/start up Windows..I've even installed Media Player 10 figuring maybe they were "demanding" an upgrade by the older versions not working, but no go. Ideas appreciated...
 
So what happens when you try to open one?

First thing that came to my mind is your file associations. Maybe your mp3 file types are no longer associated with your media player. Try opening the files with the media player.

LLH
 
Is there anything for which you won't blame MS? How about telling us what happens when you try? Does it seem to be playing but with no sound? In what application? Is there an error message?

Cheers,
Rat.
 
When you double-click on an .MP3, media player pops up and it appears to be playing - basically it acts like I've hit the mute button. I also notice that when I launch a game there is no sound.

Update: I have no volume icon in my "tray" and when I click on "sounds and audio devices" under Control Panel it says "no device found." That could be a problem. :( Why the flip would my card "disappear" -?

Update 2: "however".......when I go to Device Manager and click on Sound, Video etc Controllers, it shows an Intel AC'97 Controller, which is swears is "working properly." :rolleyes: That my card?

Update 3: still under Device Manager, when I click on Sytem Devices, then System Speaker, it says no driver installed....yet when I click on the Driver tab, it shows info for a driver.

Windows = POS. It's MS I tell ya.
 
Then the only thing that occurs to me is a corrupt driver. The System Speaker is the beeper inside the machine, not related to the sound card. It doesn't really need a driver as such, as it is very low level hardware, and Windows doesn't really use it.

AC97 is onboard sound, and the most common one at that. It's not great quality, but I've never known one to fail. The first thing I would try is to uninstall it (from device manager), then restart and let it find it again. Either download a driver from your mobo manufacturer's website, if you know the make and model of it, or use the one on the disc that came with the machine. Let us know if that doesn't fix it (and what the results are) and I'll think a bit more.

I'm loth to blame it on hardware failure at this stage. Drivers are always the first thing that second-rate tech support lines suggest (and then a virus, if that fails), so I don't like suggesting drivers either, but it does seem most likely.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Thx for the reply. I'm kind of leery about uninstalling a driver and assuming POS Windows will pick it back up, but at this point I have little to lose (knock on wood) - will give a try, thx. FYI don't know make/model and don't have disc or even documentation on it (and is it me or do PC manufacturers really suck about that kind of thing), but there has to be some kind of "hardware recognition" software/shareware out there - ? I guess if nothing else I could disconnect the card and plug back in, maybe it would treat it as new then.

Or maybe I could just give it a good kick-?
 
bigred said:
FYI don't know make/model and don't have disc or even documentation on it (and is it me or do PC manufacturers really suck about that kind of thing), but there has to be some kind of "hardware recognition" software/shareware out there - ? I guess if nothing else I could disconnect the card and plug back in, maybe it would treat it as new then.
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Try Everest Home for a free hardware detection utility. But like the guy said, AC'97 sound is onboard. So you can't disconnect it, it's not a card. Remove the driver :)
 
Let me see if I'm getting this.....are you saying I don't even HAVE a sound card per se, ie there's something built into the motherboard?
 
Nearly all cheap-to-midrange PCs come with onboard sound. And yes, that means it is built into the motherboard. These days, the same is often the case with NICs, and sometimes (bleh!) even graphics cards. So indeed, calling it a soundcard is a misnomer. You can usually disable it in BIOS, which amounts to the same thing as removing it, as Windows will never see it. This is what you'd do if you wanted to add a new soundcard.

As I say, AC97 is very common (at least 90% of the onboards I've seen) and isn't all that bad as long as you're not making music or using your PC as a stereo. But it does put a slightly bigger drain on the CPU, as it passes a lot of the work over to that. This means that for gaming, you really want a powerful soundcard so that you don't get framerate drops whenever there's a lot of noise. It sounds counter-intuitive (upping the sound processing to improve graphics performance) but it really can make a difference.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
got ya. OK I'll try uninstalling the sound and letting it "re-find" it (God help me). Thx a lot.
 
Uninstalling the driver worked. Rat, you da man and thx all who offered assistance!
 
Perhaps the MP3's would want to play more if you didn't pick them last for dodgeball all the time you insensitive lout.
 
bigred said:
Uninstalling the driver worked. Rat, you da man and thx all who offered assistance!
Click to expand...
I'm glad that worked, because if it wasn't that, there would have been painful and tedious diagnostic procedures to work through.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
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