K7S5A Pro - Unable to get internal or external sound working

[amoncarter]

Hello:

AMD 2000+
128M RAM
Older Diamond PCI Stealth II 4 MB Video in PCI#2
ANTEC Case with 2 extra fans
AMD Approved ANTEC PSU 300W
D-Link 520+ 802.11B PCI wireless card in PCI#4
WIN XP Home
SIS 7012 sound controller/SIS 735 Chipset
CMI Chipset - i've checked.
I've flashed the BIOS
Tried 2 different (working) sets of speakers

I've updated XP, installed, reinstalled and installed again - all the sound drivers, including versions from ECS, SIS & Microsoft.
Just stays silent.

I tried explicitly enabling BIOS options so it would at some combination assign a dedicated IRQ to sound but it insists on sharing IRQ's and sound is alsways being shared with the USB controller a- although different IRQ's were assigned in different iterations.

Wireless card would die but that started working after the SIS driver update. The card would post, DHCP etc would all get assigned but explorer would hang. Turned out to be true when onboard sound was enabled.

Have not been able to get either the ECS or SIS PCI drivers to install cleanly if sound was enabled in BIOS. That is my only tell tale sign something is wrong - everything else in control panel/system, PCI config utility etc report all is well.

I tried a stand-alone sound card (good) but it also stayed silent and at some point (before I reinstalled XP) started rebooting the machine as soon as I put it in.

I did pull the wireless card and try it with only video & onboard & then video/external sound cards. In both cases, no sound.

I now have a working wireless card but no sound and am at a loss as to what to try next.

[Peter M]

Here we go again ... SHARED IRQS ARE NOT A CONFLICT, LET ALONE A PROBLEM. Just leave it alone, it's OK as it is.

Now, you got the C-Media sound codec on the SiS 7012 engine. Install C-Media's sound driver; the SiS ones do not support the C-Media codec.

Then, check your speakers. You need amplifying speakers for the onboard sound, as well as for most sound cards.

The PCI VGA card might be screwing things up, because it's eating a massive amount of system bandwidth.

[amoncarter]

Thank you for the tip on IRQ nonconflicts, - I was not aware of the IRQ sharing being OK.

I am using amplified speakers, now have the latest C-Media drivers but thing is still sound dead.

I have even swapped out the VGA for an AGP video card to see if it was the video card. But when I did - I lost the ability (like before) to use the browser.

the wireless network card is okay, communicates with the router, but when i try to use it - it does not work. Out came the AGP video card, changed BIOS to show PCI video, browser started right up again.

Everything points to some issue with the wireless card & sound conflicting- but I was not able to get the sound working without the wireless card either AND i couldnt get either onboard or external sound to work.

[sfm]

I assume that you are staying away from switching on the back panel USB 2.0 when you use PCI slot 1? The two will not work together as stated in the manual.