Not sound at all...

Sentenced

Hi people, I'm desperated, hope you can help me...

First of all, this is my system:

Motherboard: ASUS P4S800D-X
Micro: Pentium IV 3.0 Ghz Prescott
RAM: 1024 mb (512 x 2) Dual Channel Kingston
HD: WD 20 Gb (Master) and WD 40 Gb (Slave)
Video: XFX GeForce 6200
OS: Windows XP Professional Edition (32 bit)

This is the problem:

I had a Sound Blaster Live!, PCI, installed on my PC until a few weeks ago. Without any apparent reason, the sound card died, but in a very strange way, those where the symptoms and signs:

- Not sound at all (except for some weird noises when I turn on the PC and during the OS initialization).
- The connections are ok (I've tested the speakers and also tried to do tests with a headset connected directly to the sound board)
- There were no changes in the PC (soft or hard)
- The SBLive is the default sound card
- The little speaker (volume control) still appears in the systray.
- The device administrator does not show any conflict at all.
- The drivers are the lastest available for this board.
- The board WORKS, I've tried it in other machine and it works perfectly.

If I remember this good, it all started while I was watching a video, the system halted, I'd reboot and then... no sound.

Well, after all this tests, I've removed the SBLive and began using the on-board sound (SoundMAX). It worked fine for about a week, and then it died again. The symptoms where exactly the same...

So I've tried a Genius Value Pack 5.1 (PCI). I've installed it and, after the automatic system installation of all the drivers and everything, it didn't work at all. As always, no conflicts, but no sound.

As I said, both boards (SBLive and Genius) worked perfectly in other PC.

Finally, I've decided to format the master HD and perform a clean installation of the OS, and give the SBLive another try. After that, the sound is still not working, and the PC performance is very poor, it's slow and it seems that there is something using all the resources of the PC (or, at least, 100% of one of the "cores", 50% of CPU usage, in the Task Manager).

Right now, the PC is only with Windows XP SP2, and the motherboard, video and sound drivers (SBLive).

One thing I've noticed is that the little speaker in the systray is sometimes rapidly changing, from mute to normal, and if I open the volume control panel it's the same, the "Mute" checkbox become checked and unchecked, like if I was clicking on it like a maniac... This is the first time I notice that, but I don't think it happened before...

Well, I don't know what else to do... Please help me, I need that PC!!!

Thanks for everything...

Sentenced To Live...

bakuryu

You are connected to the net all times ?? What firewall and A/V installed ?

VolumeTray
Use that little utility and see if u can control volume from it.

__________________
Please don't click here

Sentenced

I have a cablemodem connection, so my internet connection is permanent. However, during the clean installation, I'd disconnected the network cable and I'd only reconnected it after the installation of SP2. But even before that, the SBLive wasn't working.
I have the Free-AV antivirus and the Windows Firewall...
I'll try that utility, tell you later what happened. Thanks for your answer!

Sentenced To Live...