Hi,

I have 4 local disks on my computer. C, D, E & F

I reinstalled Windows XP and somehow the operating disk changed from C to D!

In the end, when I tried playing a song from my computer via Media Player, it said that no sound card was detected.

I think perhaps the sound card is installed in the C Drive? And now the operating system changed to D Drive.


Please advice!

In My Computer, are the drives now listed as D, E, F, and G? Or is there a C drive still listed. What is the make and model of your computer? If it has an add-on sound card do you know the make and model of that?

I really can't remember the specs for my sound card, all in Japanese, and my computer was "built" by some local guy in the Computer Mall... the point is that everything is working fine before, until I reinstalled Windows XP.

And when I tried to check the configurations for the audio files...etc... it said that the position of the files/or whatever was unknown.

My old system drive was C Drive

Now it switched magically to D Drive

I have now the following drives: C, D, E, F

It seems that the Windows program installed itself in D Drive, and C Drive still contains the "not used...but unable to delete" Windows files.

Please advice.

If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you reinstalled XP on the second drive without removing it on the first drive. Do you have 4 different hard drives or one large hard drive with 4 partitions?

Yes I reinstalled XP on second drive without removing it on first drive. Installed in D, but C still has the Windows Program on it. And now D, the second drive became the operating drive.

The second question I'm not too sure... I'll just say everything I know... the computer is 80G, and each of the 4 drives I have have different sizes:

13G, 23G, 18G, 20G (approximately)

Perhaps it is a big drive, partitioned into 4 drives.

Yes, it's a single 80gig drive partitioned into 4-20gig partitions. When you reinstalled Windows, somehow you installed it on the wrong partition. I'm just now learning partitioning and ghosting, myself. Let me ask some other people for assistance so we can get this working without losing anything

Does Windows give you a boot menu when it first starts, asking you which Windows installation you want to boot into?

Does both your C: and D: drives have a Windows directory on it?

Could you go to your C:\ drive in Windows Explorer, then open and copy the boot.ini file and paste it here for us to have a look at?

Once we figure this out, then we can work on fixing the sound, etc on the D: drive.

One final set of questions - what was the reason for reinstalling Windows? Were you having problems? If so, what kind of problems were they? Did you use the same product key to install both copies of Windows XP?

1. Windows does give me 2 options to boot, although it did not say which drive I am booting. I just chose the first option. And no sound.

2. Yes, both C: D: have Windows directory.

3. I cannot find the file "boot.ini" ... ... I tried using the search button, but could not find.

4. Reason for reinstalling Windows is because computer got infected by Trojans & Worms, my computer became so slow that I can't even open a Word Document without anything much running in the background. Now I guess I'm really protected, I have Zonealarm Firewall & Avast Antivirus.

Please advice.

Go to Start...Run...and type in "explorer" (without the quotes) and press Enter.
Go to the Tools menu and select Folder Options, then select the View tab
Scroll down and tell it to "Show hidden files"

Then navigate to the root of the C:\ drive and find the boot.ini file.
Right click on it and select Open,
Copy the text and post the results back here.

This will serve to let us know which installation is which in the boot menu. From there we can figure out the best way to help get the sound back.

This is found in C Drive-----------------

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

This is found in D Drive-----------------

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


It's so weird, how come they look the same?

Ok, first off, copy the one on the C: drive and rename the copy "boot.BAC" (without the quotes)
Then copy the one on the D: drive and rename the copy "boot.BAD" (without the quotes)

Right click on the boot.ini on the C: drive, select Properties, then remove the checkmarks at the bottom of the page (For Read Only and Hidden). then click on OK. DO the same thing for the one on the D: drive

Next, right click on the boot.ini on the C: drive and select Open.
Type in so it looks like this (I've bolded the changes that I suggest that you make):

Then Save the file.

Next, right click on the boot.ini fiel on the D: drive and select Open.
Type in so it looks like this (I've bolded the changes that I suggest that you make):

Then Save the file.

Please note that the _C is associated with partition(1) and the _D is associated with partition(2)
Also note that I used Capital letters for the boot.ini on the C: drive and lowercase letters for the boot.ini on the D: drive (that'll tell you which bootloader you're using.

Then, reboot and tell us which one you see (the one with the Capital letters or the one with the lowercase letters)
Then, if I'm correct in my guesses - it's the one with the "C" that will go to the old infected OS - and the one with the "D" that will go to the one in which the sound doesn't work.

Let us know what you find out.

Please look at Part & Part



There is a problem...

Notice that both the boot.ini files that I previously provided were the same. When I changed and saved the boot.ini file in C:, the one in D: changed as well.

After a thorough search and review, I found out that the boot.ini file that I thought belonged to D: was actually, just a shortcut to C:'s boot.ini file. In other words, the boot.ini file is located in C:, and as a shortcut in D:'s "Documents and Settings...Recent"

There just doesn't seem to be a boot.ini file for D:

Please advice.



I restarted computer, noticed the changes when I am prompted to load drives, the top one is clearly labeled _d, the bottom one _c

I chose the bottom (2nd) one, which is loading into C:. After that, I was able to get audio and sound on my computer perfectly. The only problem is that links, and files there are either missing, deleted, or corrupted. In other words, C:'s only benefit is sound, other than that, it's a bit uneasy & irritating to use.

In addition, I was unable to shut down or restart the computer whilst booting using C:

I prefer to use D: as the proper operating drive, but its just that sound problem...

Please advice.

OK, we can fix the sound issue now that we know you want to keep the stuff on D:

The major issue is that you're booting off of the C: drive. Once the boot process finishes, it turns things over to Windows on the D: drive. Not the most efficient way to run things - and a full format of the C: drive may break the ability to boot properly.

This also increases the chances of a complete Windows failure - since a failure of either the C: or the D: drive can render Windows inoperable.

As such, I'd suggest that you consider reformatting your system and reinstalling Windows on the C: drive - but that can wait until you've got the time to backup all your stuff.

Back to the sound issue (now that you know you want to boot into the D: installation).
Go to Start...Run...and type in "devmgmt.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter.
Are there any red x's or yellow !'s ? If so, which devices are they on?

It will be good if I can post or upload screenshots.

But anyways there are no red x's.

However, there are two yellow ?s.

In addition, one of the yellow ? has a ! attached to it.

I am now going to do a translation (as my computer operating system is not in ENGLISH):

Other "Equipment" ?
Multi-media Sound Control Controller !?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After I double-clicked the "Multi-media Sound Control Controller", it stated that "something...something... is not installed" and there was an option to re-install it.

Please do not confuse this as "Sound, Video, & Game Control Controllers" which is quite below the "Multi-media Sound Control Controller", as the former works but the latter has the ? and !? on it.


I hope I have made myself clear, I tried...

Please advice.

You need the sound card driver. Download SIW. It's a application the shows what's inside your computer. Once you run it, you can go to the audio portion and find out what you have

There is a problem, I cannot access the link. This is because it is somehow blocked in my current country, where I live in right now... CHINA!

I tried to access it via a proxy, it worked, but I was then unable to access to download link, this is because the maximum file I can access via the proxy is only 0MBs

Is it possible for garmanma to send it to my email?

Please advice.

2 others you can try instead
Belarc Advisor
SiSoft
My only question is if you can't download these, how are you going to download the driver?

I'm not sure about what to do, so I guess I'll copy and paste everything that Belarc Advisor gave me.

Operating System
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

System Model
No details available
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P4P800-X Rev 1.xx
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 080009 06/23/2005
Drives Memory Modules c,d
81.92 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
39.59 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

BENQ DVD DUAL DW1610 [CD-ROM drive]
????? [Floppy drive]

Maxtor 6Y080L0 [Hard drive] (81.96 GB) -- drive 0, s/n Y20HDDRC, rev YAR41BW0, SMART Status: Healthy 512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM1' has 256 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM3' has 256 MB

Multimedia-None detected

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does this help?

Please advice...

Belarc doesn't see anything for multi-media. Uninstall Belarc and try my other link

Sorry, this download link is expired.

can you give me another one?

So the point of using those online things is it IDENTIFY my multimedia system?

Please advice.

Right click on the devices and select "Properties"
Click on the Details tab and then select "Hardware ID" from the dropdown box.
Note the 4 characters after VEN_ and the 4 characters after DEV_

Then, go to this website: http://www.pcidatabase.com
and enter the characters after the VEN_ into the Vendor search box.
Then click on Search.
When the link for the Vendor shows up, click on it.
Then search the page for the characters after the DEV_ and let us know what it finds.

Vendor Details

--------------------------------------------------

Device



Please advice.

Here's a link to your motherboard (in English): http://support.asus.com/download/download....model=P4P800S-X
Click on the + sign next to Audio to expand the category, then select the Windows XP download.

Once it's downloaded, double click on it to install it.

Component Transfer Error

Component: Windows Files Staccato
File group: Programs Files Staccato
FIle:
Error: ?????????????????????????????


Install unsuccessful.

Please advice.

Can you still boot into the other installation in order to verify that the sound card is still working?

If not, then I'd have to suggest trying another sound card in your system to ensure that the one that's there hasn't died.

Yes, ususally, when I want to watch movies or videos online, I'll boot into the C Drive.

The sound card is working on C Drive.

Well, I guess to fix my problem is too complicated without actually seeing and examining my computer physically.

There's either something wrong with the download, or something wrong with Windows (IMO).

Could it be that you're trying to use the English downloads on a Japanese system? (just a thought)

OK, let's try this. We're gonna try to use the driver from the C: drive to setup the device on the D: drive.

Boot into the OS on the C: drive
Locate the driver files on the C: drive. You can do this by going to Device Manager, right clicking on the device and select "Properties"
Then click on the Driver tab, then on the Driver Details button
Make a note of the location of the driver(s)

Boot into the OS on the D: drive
Locate the device in Device Manager.
Right click on it and select "Update Driver"
In the next window select "No, not at this time" and click Next
In the next window select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and click Next
In the next window select "Search for the best driver in these locations", then put a check mark in the "Include this location in the search"
Then use the browse button to browse to the directory that the driver is located in on the C: drive, then click on next and hope that it works.

If it doesn't work, please let us know the exact error message that you receive (most likely it's going to be some sort of Access Denied message - and we'll have to tell you how to take ownership of that directory).

IS it possible for you to provide screenshots of what I should do? Because I really don't know how to do the things you suggested, and I can't seem to be able to do that translation very well...

Or I can provide screenshots to you.

Can we talk on MSN or something?

Anybody?

How to use Device Manager

Sorry Ayameko, but I don't do MSN or other kinds of support - there's too much to do here.
FYI - I don't even visit this forum normally. It was requested that I take a look at your problem to see if I could help. So it may take a day or two before I reappear here.

First, try re-downloading the audio driver. If you're using Japanese Windows, then you'll need the Japanese driver. Try this link for a direct download: http://dlsvr05.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock47...88_Win2K_XP.zip

If that doesn't work, ;lt me know how far you can get using my instructions - then we'll work on each step individually. If you've got a question about a step, post the screenshot in Japanese and we'll see what we can figure out from there.

Never mind guys, thanks for your help.

I'm giving up on this, well, yea, I'll just use D: for normal work, C: for watching videos or something.

Thanks for all the posts!

Farewell!