T30 Audio Problems

[Dan Davies]

I am not sure how it started, but my wife's T30 will not do anything other than a beep. I checked the device drivers and there are a series of yellow ! by all the audio drivers. I followed the troubleshooter's directions and uninstalled then tried to reinstall one of the drivers, but it just tells me that it cannot install the driver. I downloaded the SoundMAX driver package from Lenovo, and it installed, but the SoundMAX control panel will not open and all the yellow !'s are still there.

Is there a package of sound drivers I can install? Or do I have to go to the recovery CD's?

Dan

[sjthinkpader]

Have you check this computer for malware?

If it is clean and sound worked before, it could be the sound chip had failed. Run the PC Doctor and see if it can identify the fault.

[Dan Davies]

The machine appears clean and the sound card appears ok, it is just that there are no drivers! Other suggestions?

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Davies]

Another question: If I do need to run the Recovery CD's - how do I do that? I seem to recall that just booting from them does not work. Is there a procedure to follow?

Dan

[sjthinkpader]

When the IBM splash screen comes up, press F11 to enter recovery utility. I still suggest you run the PC Doctor utility before spending much time on trial and error.

[Dan Davies]

I have been following your suggestions - I am just thinking ahead.

PCDoctor showed errors in the sound drivers - it could not play wav or midi.

Next weird thing - before contacting this board, I tried something else. On the start up screen, it showed 2 OS choices: Win XP and Windows. We normally use the WinXP choice, and have never tried the other. I thought, why not try the 2nd choice? It loaded another copy of WinXP (yes, there are two on that start up screen now!) and this one has good sound! I do not wish to just use that copy, as I would not room on the HD for two complete copies of WinXP. So it still comes back to missing drivers!

Dan

[sjthinkpader]

Was this the DOS version of PC Doctor? If it is, it should not matter which version of OS. Was the successful OS boot repeatable?

[Dan Davies]

It was PCDr Win - it was already installed.

Regarding the other OS - it appears to be dual boot with two separate installations of WinXP. The sound card works fine in the other one. Is there some way of copying over the drivers from the one to the other? That would save me the trouble of having to re-install all the updates and software and data.

Dan

[sjthinkpader]

There are some driver backup and restore software. It was mentioned over at the Win7 forum and used to port Vista video driver to Win7.

There must be some file damage or recent software install that caused the problem.