The SoundMAX audio driver did not load. You may need to re-install SoundMAX

[David Emerson]

I have bought two of these. Refurbished HP Compaq DC5800 Small Form Factor Desktop PC Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.0GHz (E2180), 2GB Memory, 80GB HDD, DVD ROM, Win7 Home Premium 64 Bit Neither of them will produce sound. On boot up I get an error message stating. "The SoundMAX audio driver did not load. You may need to re-install SoundMAX." I have tried re-installing the audio driver but to no avail. I would love and answer to this before I ship back another one of these. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? Thank you so very much in advance!

 

[Outlander_04]

Head to Device Manager
Find the entries for the sound controller [ it should have a yellow triangle next to it ]
Right click and uninstall .
Reboot

did that fix the problem ?

 

[David Emerson]

I do not have a sound controller in my device manager. Can I paste a screenshot of the device manager here for you to see? If so how do I do that?

 

[David Emerson]

Under "Sound,video and game controllers I have a sub menu. "High definition audio device". Yes I have installed a discrete graphics card into this PC. It is an ATI Radeon HD 4650. Could this be locking out the onboard Audio?

 

[Outlander_04]

The radeon 4650 entry will be to run sound through an HDMI cable from the graphics card .

In the graphics driver try disabling sound over HDMI , and the speaker connections from the sound card /mb may work again

 

[David Emerson]

I have disabled the sound in the radeon 4650. However, I still have the same problem.

 

[Outlander_04]

you have a sound card you added in?

what about the sound from the mb ? Is that working?

 

[David Emerson]

No , It does not seem to be working on either PC. No I did not install a sound card. Only the graphics card.

 

[scruge]

I have the same system and had the same problem.
When you installed the new video card the system disabled the integrated sound device in the system bios.

All you have to do is at boot up go into your bios settings and enable your integrated audio, save your settings and let windows boot. Your audio drivers will now load and work.

 

[Cavern lesley]

I have the same system and had the same problem.
When you installed the new video card the system disabled the integrated sound device in the system bios.

All you have to do is at boot up go into your bios settings and enable your integrated audio, save your settings and let windows boot. Your audio drivers will now load and work.

Thank you scruge , it works perfectly. i'm almost planning to get an usb sound card lol.