I supplied an Asus p5gc-mx mobo to a customer (together with some RAM and an E2160 CPU), a few week later, the customer says he got everything going except for the sound… and he would like me to take a look at it.

There were also some issues with a wireless logitek keyboard and mouse

At first I figured it must be a simple driver issue (particularly since device manager showed a yellow triangle with a “!”).

To be sure it wasn’t a driver issue, I tried booting from pclinuxOS2007… but no sound.

I then tried ubcd4win, but still no sound

As a last resort, I tried mepis, and that worked.

Phew!!

Now that I ruled out a hardware problem, I decided to look at the driver… The customer had misplaced the mobo driver CD, so I just used my universal drivers, and installed a driver for the Realtek ALC883.

But no sound…

I figured I’ll go straight to the source… I went to the Asus website, and downloaded the latest drivers for the Realtek ALC883.

But still no go!

OK, now what?

I download the latest Asus bios (0401), and install it… but still no go.

While puzzling over it, I fix up the front USB ports (they weren’t connected correctly). I also “extract” the XP licence code (as customer has lost the little sticker, and the “usual” software for displaying the license code didn’t work).

The post at: http://www.computer-aid.com.au/blog/2008/01/06/recover-xp-product-key-from-failed-hardware-motherboard/ explains what to do.

The usb ports were also acting strange: usb drives would work, but not usb wireless adapters.

In the end, I admit defeat, and tell the customer that there might be a problem/corruption with windows XP… otherwise, there isn’t anything I can do.

A few weeks later, I get an email from the customer (saying that he managed to fix the problem!).

It turns out that the customer eventually found the mobo CD, and although installing the CD drivers still didn’t fix the problem, there were 2 hot fixes hiding in a realtek folder. Install the hot fixes, and everything worked (sound and wireless keyboard).

Its rare that a customer can do a better job than me (but it can happen!).