PC audio problem

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MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
Hi guys...

My pc is playing audio very quietly on the left hand channel.

Just put a new sound card in (replacing the on-board sound) and it's still playing very quietly on the LH channel :angry:

I know it's not an amp or speaker isssue, and the cables are fine. I've tried the line out jack on the back, on the front, and on the new sound card and it's the same issue regardless.

Thing is, every now and then, it plays both channels fine, possibly suggesting a dry joint somewhere... but where!?!?

any ideas would be greatly received as I'm lost.
 
IRq conflict, driver issue, dodgy pci slot, dodgy motherboard and probably a few others. You'll need to eliminate them all one by one.

No warning triangle in the hardware list is there?
 
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MontyVeda

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
IRq conflict, driver issue, dodgy pci slot, dodgy motherboard and probably a few others. You'll need to eliminate them all one by one.

No warning triangle in the hardware list is there?
in the device manager?

just one in 'non plug and play drivers' for 'serial' ... but that doesn't look like the culprit.

I guess i can rule out a dodgy pci slot seeing as the problem is present with both on board sound and a sound card, which is also using new drivers. I guess the next step is try a new motherboard, which is annoying.
 
I'd get some more opinions before you go to the trouble of swopping one out and I'd double check all the connectors are tight all over the board, even remove and reconnect.
 
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MontyVeda

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
Aye cheers crackle... my new sound card lasted a day before it had 'driver issues', so I'm back to the onboard sound and have reinstalled the drivers for it.

Having done a little more indepth testing to find the root of the problem, I've discovered that playing an mp3 in winamp gives me only one channel most or the time, then playing the same mp3 in WMP it plays in both channels... so I've just reinstalled winamp and it appears to be playing in both channels again... why i didn't think of that before spending £160 on a new amp, then another tenner on a new sound card, i'll never know :blush: I should know by now that reinstalling often works wonders!
 
Ah Winamp!

I love Winamp but by gawd is it trouble sometimes. The most common thing is it losing playlists, followed by not properly detecting devices. Then every time they release a new version, something improves and something else stops working.
 
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MontyVeda

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
aye there is no logic with software sometimes... there's not even a balance control in my winamp so that was the last thing i expected.

Another thing i as going to ask is... how do i reinstall windows on a pre-installed PC which came with no boot disk? I seem to recall a 'create boot disk' section somewhere in the control panel, but maybe that was only on pre XP machines. The advice from microsoft is "contact the manufacturer of your computer to get a boot disk", assuming it's a Dell or Acer, but not in my case. I can't find a downloadable boot disk, apart from cracked versions on some of the shadier torrent sites, but having a legit copy of XP, I'd rather keep it that way. so any advice on reinstalling XP without a boot disk would be massively appreciated.
 
I can only answer in general terms. If you have the license number, normally on the label on the bottom, then you can use any disk and just re-enter your license number but that would be for a full on rebuild. Be sure to match up the operating system though, your license number for windows XP wouldn't work with an XP Media disk. So for instance you could buy an oem disk off ebay and use your valid serial number.

Normally, there's a separate partition on which the manufacturer has installed drivers and recovery software. exactly what and how depends on the model, age and manufacturer, you should have a menu option which runs a utility to run various recovery options.

Aside from this, you can boot into safe mode by pressing F8 on computer startup. From here you can run several XP recovery options, some of which might want the disk though.

I don't recall ever seeing an option for creating anything but recovery disks.

I only rebuild when I've exhausted all other options. I hate the faff of re-installing and re-configuring things. What I should do and recommend to you, is to make a mirrored copy using something like Norton Ghost or similar. Then you just drop on your working copy when it all goes wrong.

Also make sure you have system restore configured and working and create restore points before you change anything. This works surprisingly often. Likewise running the chkdsk utility in windows explorer and defragging, keeps things in working order too.
 
Another great quick test is a boot disk. If you boot from a linux disk/memory stick which has audio drivers for your hardware you can test with another OS without having to re-install. Just a thought.
 
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