Sound gone for good on T60 with Vista

[ToniCipriani]

We have two test machines, both T60s, that we installed Vista Ultimate on the machine, then at some point, sound goes and can't get it back unless you reinstall Vista. The first machine seems to have lost sound right after some patch, the second machine lost sound after going into sleep then coming back. Popping a hard drive with an XP image works fine, but once it's back to the Vista, it stays dead. I've already applied the HD Audio hotfix (KB937077), reinstalled 3 different versions of drivers, all no go. I've even tried performing a system restore back to the point before it failed, and even that didn't bring sound back.

Windows reports drivers and hardware function correctly.

Windows Media Player reports that the "file cannot be played", Winamp reports that an "unspecified external error" has occured, and in Windows sound control panel, the test tone simply returns "Failed to play test tone".

Another thing I noticed on one of the machine is that whenever something happens that plays a sound (e.g. accessing UAC, the machine beeps), the machine sorts of "jerk" and experience a short delay, compared to when sound is working.

BIOS sounds also work (plugging and unplugging AC adapter, etc.).

Has anyone have this problem?

Thanks!

[ryengineer]

It seems like Windows Vista problem, you say you installed 3 different drivers and yet don't mention from where.

Have you tried the following driver?:

Audio driver for Windows Vista.

You can also try running PC Doctor audio tests.

[ToniCipriani]

It seems like Windows Vista problem, you say you installed 3 different drivers and yet don't mention from where.

Have you tried the following driver?:

Audio driver for Windows Vista.

You can also try running PC Doctor audio tests.

I'm sure there's no hardware problems, since if I swapped the hard drive back with the original XP image on, it works perfectly. We mistaken it as hardware failure initially.

Two drivers came from Lenovo, one from HP. One of them is the Thinkpad Audio Features XI, which came from System Update, another was a link from another forum which is the same one you posted. The HP driver was done by searching for AD1981 (the T60's sound chip).

[ToniCipriani]

Fixed it, Vista SP1 RC was the answer. So I guess it's a bug with Vista's new audio system.