Question PC sometimes doesn't detect my PCIe sound card ?

[xc87494789]

I use an optical cable to connect my soundbar to my PC, but there is no optical port on the newest mobos, so I bought ASUS XONAR SE for its optical port.

I installed it on PCIE x16 (x8? the longest one next to GPU), installed ASUS Xonar Audio Center (Driver), selected S/PDIF out, worked, and everything was good.

The next day when I started my PC, the soundcard was not detected
open Xonar audio center - can't find any device
reinstall the driver - didn't work
switch to PCIE x4 (a shorter one), then reinstall the driver - worked

One day later, the same thing happened again, and I switched back to the original PCIE socket, worked.

Then I disabled the onboard soundcard in BIOS. Sometimes everything's good when I start my PC, sometimes it requires a reboot to be detected, and sometimes it won't be detected after several reboots.

Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

 

[Paperdoc]

You MAY have a problem with a setting in Windows. Windows can use only ONE sound output device at a time, no matter how many your system may have. In your case you have three, I bet. One is the mobo audio chip, one is the new audio card in the PCIe slot, and the third likely is on your VIDEO card if you have one. There never has been any standard way for audio generated on the mobo or elsewhere to be fed to a graphics card. But today the HDMI connection system is used VERY widely, and one advantage of that is it does carry audio to your monitor to use IF it has speakers. So almost all video cards also have their own audio chip in them, AND the process of installing that card often changes a Windows setting to that Windows uses the audio system on your VIDEO card to send out sound. When that happens, the other sound outputs get nothing!

Also look at this item before doing the rest. You had a different audio card in a PCIe slot, and in fact re-installed it in this process. So get your system running. In the bottom left search screen type in Device Manager. Expand the item Sound, Video and Game Controllers to see all the devices Windows can detect now. Find your OLD sound card, highlight it, and use the top Action menu to un-install it. ALSO un-install the new ASUS audio card for now. Leave the mobo audio system and any showing from your video card alone. Back out and shut down. Now remove the old card and install the new ASUS card. Start up and you should see a message that a new device was installed (the ASUS card) and its drivers are being installed.

Now, back in the bottom left type in Sound Settings. Open the top selection drop-down window and see all your Sound Output Devices. Choose the ASUS card as you Default Sound Output Device. Now lower down, do the same for your Default Sound INPUT device IF you plan to connect your microphone to that ASUS card's port. Back out of that.

Reboot your system and see if sound is being fed out of the ASUS card now.

 

[pctech1]

dont you have an extra pcie x1 slot where you can plug your sound card? most mother boards have at least one such slot... even if it's close to the graphics card you can still plug a sound card there (usually)

 

[xc87494789]

dont you have an extra pcie x1 slot where you can plug your sound card? most mother boards have at least one such slot... even if it's close to the graphics card you can still plug a sound card there (usually)

Thank you for your reply!

My mobo is ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI and there are 2 pcie x1 and 1 pcie x16 (x8? looks like same with GPU slot)

I tried on all of them and got the same thing, sometimes the soundcard can be detected on first boot, sometimes after a reboot, sometimes not.

When it can't be detected, "USB device not recognised" message shows up, just like a malfunctioning USB drive.

Does it sound like the soundcard itself is broken?

 

[gamerk316]

This sounds REALLY familiar to me; I know Xonars had a problem where they would randomly get disconnected, but I honestly forget what the solution was. Worst case, if the Xonar Unified Drivers are still a thing you can give that a try and see if that fixes the issue. [I'll be honest, I haven't used an ASUS soundcard for about 5 years now so I'm trying to recall everything from memory].

Also, Windows *can* handle multiple audio output devices (albeit very inelegantly) and it's generally recommended to disable all but the one you want to use. I haven't had a problem in years, but its probably safest to just disable onboard just for testing if nothing else.