Server Help :: View topic - Need some assistance troubleshooting...

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Trash Talk - Need some assistance troubleshooting...

Cerium - Fri Sep 29, 2006 5:55 pm
Post subject: Need some assistance troubleshooting...

Ok, an hour of googling and resulted in quite literally nothing.

Here's the situation:
- I have an MS keyboard which has those handy extra keys along the top for things like volume control, web, etc. Today, I noticed that when I press anything related to the volume, it does nothing. The little volume bar shows up indicating that the button itself is functioning, but they do not change the actual volume level (or in the case of mute, they do not mute the volume).

- In an effort to find and locate the source of the first problem, I noticed windows is unable to play standard wave files without a 3rd party program (IE, Windows Media Player can play sound fine, but in sound recorder [run->sndrec32] the record and play buttons are grayed out). This was found when I went to Sounds and Audio devices in the control panel, then the Sounds panel. The little 'preview' button is grayed out. Also, any sounds windows would play as an event also do not work (IE: startup/shutdown sounds, program start, etc).

I'm not entirely sure how either of these happened, nor am I sure how to go about fixing it, as everything I've tried has ended in failure. I've done the following:

-Cold boot
-Reinstalling sound drivers
-Reinstalling IntelliType software (for controlling the extra kb buttons)

I'm 99% sure it's not a virus, due to how careful I am about what runs on my systems, but I'm currently using FProt to scan just to be sure -- so far, nothing has been found.

Any suggestions would be appreciated except for the three retards, as they have the combined intelligence of Terry Schivo.

Thanks
-C

Mine GO BOOM - Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:50 pm
Post subject:

Reinstalling the drivers should fix this, but check anyways. Anything using direct audio acceleration (media players, etc) work which means the drivers are there. But anything just using software sound can't find your hardware, which is most commonly windows doesn't have the correct perferred audio hardware selected.

You using onboard audio, a PCI card, or using a PCI card and your motherboard has onboard audio also?

Cerium - Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:58 pm
Post subject:

Using a PCI card (SB Audigy 2), and the on-board chip is disabled.

Already checked that, but until now I didnt notice something:
The "Microsoft sound mapper" (or whatever) is no longer there, which would explain windows itself not being able to play sounds.

I'll see if reinstalling that fixes anything.

Edit:
I think I figured out the problem...
It would seem something decided it was a good idea to blast (delete) every audio and video codec I had installed, leaving windows with the basic PCM decoder. It also seems WMP keeps it's own list as it could still function normally.

I ended up using System Restore to drop back to the 18th and everything is fine and dandy (sort of), but I still have no idea how this happened or what exactly was fixed by falling back. If anyone has any idea, let me know.

Edit #2:
Interesting. It appears that the codecs listed under the "Audio Codecs" and "Video Codecs" devices are simply what is listed in the registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32. Deleting the keys simply removes the entry from the list and does not remove the reference to the actual codec.

It would seem theres another list maintained somewhere with complete references to the files. I didn't care enough to locate the actual list (as divx.dll showed up a number of times), but deleting the files worked well enough.

Windows has some serious organization issues...

Muskrat - Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:56 am
Post subject: Re: Need some assistance troubleshooting...

Cerium wrote:

IntelliType software (for controlling the extra kb buttons)

It wouldnt happen to be the bluetooth one, would it?

I've got one, didn't even install that intellitype stuff-- the mouse that came with it also had a better feel before installing the driver that came with it. And yes, my volume buttons work correctly.

Cerium - Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:04 pm
Post subject:

The IntelliType/IntelliPoint software is pretty universal, so I'm pretty sure regardless of the MS mouse you have, we have the same software.

Personally, I've never had any trouble/complaint with it once I got a chance to mess with the options. I think what you were having trouble with is the "Mouse Acceleration" option, which I never got used to either. After installation, goto Control Panel -> Mouse and under one of the 5 new tabs theres an option to enable/disable it.