I have an HP Media Center PC m1050e with a Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card. My problem is that sometimes when I boot the machine (about 50% of the time, seemingly random), all sound is completely disabled and I have to reboot to make it work again. It happens most often after I close RealPlayer and Yahoo Music Jukebox. Any suggestions?
I've tried rollbacking/updating the drivers and I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the sound card. Neither worked. Next time I have my computer opened i'll try your suggestion looqas.
Since you have been able to use Audigy before and still can it's not in BIOS. Sure you can go and disable the on-board sound (and it's recommendable), but BIOS is not a flip-flop which alters settings every second time.
It's either in you PCI slot, in Audigy itself or drivers. It could very well be that the card is going bad. The current is cut off at some point (maybe the slodering in failing) or something like that.
My guess is that card is failing. So try the reseating or swicthing a PCI slot.
So, open the case and try reseating first. If it's not helping then move on the next phase.
Might be a good idea first to see if you got drivers for the Audigy available.
Then uninstall/remove the card from Control Panel -> Device Manager before changing PCI slot. You can actually remove the card from Device Manager before reseating or anything. This helps you put the finger on the issue a bit more precise. If the reseated and reinstalled card in your current slot is still not working it time to try the last trick up your sleeve. Change the PCI slot.
Throughout the process:
Let Windows search the standard drivers for HDD and let it search them from the net.
I doubt that your problems are caused by the corrupt drivers, because software is not fickle either and does not really explain the behaviour you are experiencing.
My very educated bet is that the problem is in HW. So options are in this case reseating or trying a new PCI slot. Good luck.
Edit: The sentences make better sense and grammatical side looked into.