Sound Card

Robm1955

I have an Acer Aspire X3200, which has a Sata drive. Unexpectedly, the sound has gone. The control settings are telling me that there are no speakers plugged in, when I know there is. I've tested the speakers, and they're ok. The driver for the sound is up to date, so I think my only option, is to buy a new sound card. Problem is the card slots on this pc are smaller, and I can't seem to find any. Can anyone help, or recommend any sound cards.

Mirno

By smaller - I assume you mean you're expecting an old PCI slot (about 4 inches long) and there are only PCI-E slots (about 1 inch long).

Creative do a couple of PCI express sound cards - the cheapest of which is ~£30. You may also find Asus Xonar cards that may be slightly cheaper and also with PCI-E 1x slots.

For example:
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-xonar-dgx-pci-express-5-1-channel-gaming-audio-card-821K.html?src=3

Note this is not an endorsement - I've not bought a sound card in years! There may be better places to buy from too - dabs tend to have a good selection, but not necessarily the best price!

Mirno

Spankey

Before you buy anything download the drivers for the sound card then uninstall it completely and reboot after the uninstall.
Once pc is booted up again then fresh install the drivers you downloaded for it and see if its back online.
I would also pull the card out of the slot and push it back into motherboard to make a fresh good connection before i did the driver reinstall.

Cisco001

Looking up spec from Acer, you should have PCI-E slot.
http://panam.acer.com/acerpanam/desktop/2010/acer/Aspire/AspireX3200/AspireX3200sp5.shtml

What you need is a low profile PCI-E sound card.
Asus DGX is cheap.

onzey

Spankey wrote: »

I would also pull the card out of the slot and push it back into motherboard to make a fresh good connection before i did the driver reinstall.

Quite likely to be on board sound.

I seem to remember having an external USB sound device once which is another option if sound can't be restored.

Lum

Careful with those Asus Xonar cards. They are fantastic cards when they work, but they're really fussy about what they will work in. I ended up taking mine back and replacing it with a Creative Labs card that worked perfectly... and I never thought I'd write anything positive about a Creative card made after 1997!

If you still want to get a Xonar, run this tool in the background while you go about your day to day stuff. If the graph doesn't stay entirely in the green (yellow if you're on Windows 8) then do not get a Xonar.

Spankey

this looks ok maybe try it if all else fails
http://www.waeplus.co.uk/item/232528/Dynamode-USB-Sound-Card-7?ref=gooad

Robm1955

Thanks for all your advice and recommendations, I look at all the suggested cards. I don't want to spend too much on a high spec, so a simple one will do. As for the drivers, when I search from within Vista (update drivers), I get the message my drivers are up to date.

Browntoa

go to the asus site and download the drivers from there, install it and see if it works , if not delete the audio device from hardware and then let it reinstall the hardware

might be worth going back to a restore point when the sound last worked to test if its a corruption or some other software has taken it over

macman

As above, uninstall the device and reboot, it will detect the 'new' hardware and reinstall the drivers.

Robm1955

Already tried that Macman, thanks. Still not working though.