[Lyndon]

Forgive me for asking you guys again.  But I am stumped.  I have an Abit IP35-E mobo, and a Intel e2180 dual core chipset.  Anyway, I just downloaded a crap of AMD chipset drivers to make my new HP/Compaq laptop run on XP Pro, instead of Vista Home.  The last hurdle on that nightmare of drivers (which HP would not help or support) was finding compatible Conexant AUDIO drivers.  I don't think I opened any of those drivers up on my Intel system, just downloaded, transferred to my thumb drive and onto my laptop, but I suspect this may be the source of my problems...
Now, when I try to rip one of my cd's, or tranfer music/audio files to my mp3 players, I lose the volume control on the Realtek master volume slider and knob.  Try to turn it up and it will return to zero.  If I remove the RealTek drivers, and install them again and reboot, I can turn the volume back up, and everything works fine.  But like I said, if I rip, or transfer files, boom! This happens in WMP, Media Monkey, DbPoweramp, Roxio, etc. I've researched and only found older threads where people had problems with Realtek drivers and XP SP3, but these seemed to be solved over a year ago.  I am open to thoughts.
Thanks,
Lyndon

[Levi]

I would check Realtek website for the latest drivers for your mobo. 

[Lyndon]

Thanks, Levi. 
That is the second thing I did last week.  Nothing worked until
I went up to my stereo amp mentor in Bountiful, and he found the orginal driver cd for the motherboard we owned.  He threw out all the newest drivers from Realtek, and installed the original. So far, so good, though I think he also let it install the original drivers for the video card, so I am right now downloading the newer drivers for my vid card.  I know for you IT guys, most of this is ho-hum and a piece of cake, but this has been driving me nuts the past two months. Now I am stupid enough to start figuring a HTPC, but should do more reading.  I picked up a AMD dual core chip and a mobo, but installed
Ubuntu, and can't get it to recognize or configure any of the drivers off of the mobo. For me, this Ubuntu, or is this Linux Light, will have a very steep learning curve.  Time to ignore this crap, pour a cup of fresh ground coffee, and have a wedge of the dark chocolate brownies with walnuts that just came out of the oven.
Lyndon

[mgalusha]

I know for you IT guys, most of this is ho-hum and a piece of cake

It's never a piece of cake.. I picked up a new laptop a couple of weeks ago and it too had Vista. I ran it for a few days but the performance wasn't noticeably better than the 4 yr old one it replaced and several pieces of software I use a lot just wouldn't run and one wouldn't even install. So I said game over I'm installing XP. It took an hour or so of digging to find all the drivers as Toshiba doesn't support XP on this model but once installed it's been trouble free, no driver errors and the performance is what I expected from a new machine with 4G of ram.

I also tried a bare metal install of Vista since Toshiba puts a ton of crapware on their machines. It ran faster but still had the same compatibility problems. Still not as fast as XP though I didn't try it with aero shut off.

This machine has an AMD processor and chipset with Realtek audio and so far no audio driver issues though I haven't tried ripping anything, I do that on my desktop as the drives are much faster as is the network connection. You have me curious tho, I may have to install dbPoweramp on the LT and give it a try.

mike

[Lyndon]

Yes, the difference in performance on my new laptop, when I switched it to XP Pro, was huge.  I only had 2 G of ram, though, vs your 4 G, Mike.
But I am impressed that you found the compatible drivers in such a short time.  It took me a week of forums and such.
I really do think I may have double clicked one of those AMD drivers and that is what short circuited my Intel chipset, and caused the problems.  I finally found a updated driver for my vid card and I am back in clover with my desktop.
Good vids, good audio, though I wonder how good this built in Realtek audio card is...I ordered that 8 channel card
off of eprey last week, and am wondering about using it...though I am so happy to have a functioning computer that that may be foolish. 
That Ubuntu is my first foray into a Linux OS Platform.  Now I need to find some Ubuntu for Dummies to make it work with my new HTPC project.  That, and score some big HD's and set up a RAID system.
Mike,
How is your speaker project coming along?  Did you get the parts from Dr. Geddes?  That sounds much more exciting and interesting than this driver cr*p.
Lyndon

[mgalusha]

How is your speaker project coming along?  Did you get the parts from Dr. Geddes?  That sounds much more exciting and interesting than this driver cr*p.

Not yet, this reminds me I need to email Dr. Geddes and see if he has any kind of shipping date yet. The drivers were out of stock and were supposed to be in around the beginning of October, which it is..

Mike

[Lyndon]

Wow, so this is going to be more delayed than I thought.  Sounds like a winter project, Mike.

Are you going to attend RMAF?  Does Dr. Geddes, or someone plan to use some of his speakers?  I would think that would be a marvelous showcase for him with a smaller audio distributor.

Didn't that work out very well for the Emerald speakers?  IIRC, Zybar heard them and was so impressed, he bought the speakers and became a dealer for them.  Now for him, that was really a statement, after all the gear he has been through the past 4 years.
Ah, well, I better stay off this off topic stuff, and go to your review page for this non Magnetic Core material.

[boead]

A couple of years ago I built a new Core2 Duo PC. My computers are always in a state of upgrade, been so since 1990’ish.
That build was a E6400 C2D with an Asus P5B Deluxe main board (Intel i965 chipset) an ATI X1900 graphics card, twin 400GB Maxtor drives on a Hotpoint PCIe raid controller,  2GB G.Skills PC2-6400 memory and assorted goodies.  I water cool and overclock; that machine ran at 3600MHz x2. I started off with WinXP then went to Vista32 beta and eventually to Vista32 Ultimate. I really like Vista, big improvements to XP in many ways. People don’t like change but I embrace it. XP may have been snappier but so was Win2000 compared to XP and Win98 to 2000. It comes with progress and everyone always complains.

I just choose an upgrade path that was simple and relatively cheap. I installed an Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 that overclocks to 3500MHz X4 easily. I upgraded to 4GB of Mushkin PC2-8500 memory for some insane bandwidth and replaced the Maxtor drives (they both died in less than 2 years with 1 year warrantees’) with two new Western Digital “Black” drives at 750GB each (as fast as the previous Raptors). I also reinstalled Win Vista but with the 64-bit ultimate edition.

The system is blazing fast!! What’s interesting is that in order to install the Vista Upgrade I had to install WinXP first. I played with XP for a while then installed Vista64. Quite honestly, Vista64 is noticeably faster and quite snappy. With the appropriate clocks (horsepower) Vista is superior.  Without the memory, clock cycles and memory bandwidth Vista is handicapped, that’s what people are experiencing today. However XP has its own inherent handicap or bottleneck that no hardware can overcome, at some point XP just can’t keep up  - Windows Vista can(will) run circles around XP with the appropriate hardware support.

Yeah, Vista on a Centrino laptop with 1Gb of memory is not good. XP is better suited but with the appropriate hardware Vista is the obvious choice.

[Lyndon]

Boead,
That sounds like a really nice system.  I agree, that now, with the right components, that Vista Premium is probably pretty good.  But that sure isn't what Microsoft was selling us with those laptops and that Centrino chip as you mentioned.  I know, I had one with that sticker that said, "Vista Ready".  Yeah, right.

I wish I had your expertise with this Ubuntu on my new build.  Blah. My friend says I should just bite the bullet and buy Windows Media Server.  Maybe so. Things are not coming along at all well.
Time to go listen to some live music.  Salt Lake has a good rockabilly flavored swing band called the Radio Rhythm Makers, and I hope to catch them at a 'tree-hugger fund raiser' tonight.
Lyndon

[boead]

BTW: My mainboard (and most today) have eSATA ports on the back. This provides external SATA drives to be used. I have a 300GB SATA drive in a Vantec NexStar external harddrive case (tiny, fanless) that supports both USB and SATA connectivity. I have WinXP Pro installed on it and boot to it IF I have a Vista compatibility issue. I generally use it for work although all of my apps work fine under Vista now.

Again, in direct comparison Vista 64 is faster than WinXP for sure! It’s also more intuitive and nicer to navigate with. XP feels and looks like a relic to me at this point - old and clunky.

Comments about Realtek audio. I’ve used all sorts of audio cards, my last few boards had Realtek HD chips and prior ones used nVidia. Quite honestly they all are substandard. On par with sub-$100 CD Players at best. Creative Labs and E-MU make better stuff but not by much.  M-Audio is better still but not anything to write about. Bright, hard sound. Fuzzy soundstage with a lack of transparency, bad bass and raspy highs when compared to anything Mid-Fi audiophile.  I don’t think there is an onboard audio chip for any computer (PC or Mac) that doesn’t sort of suck. I make the most of it, use it for convenience but that’s about it. In direct comparison, an Apple iPod, MS Zune or CL Zen will sound better. 
Best I managed was an M-Audio 24/96 Audiophile PCI card or even an M-Audio external USB audio device until I got a Scott Nixon. Well prior to that I used an M-Audio DIO and a California Audio Labs DAC but the Nixon sounds better and is easier to use, also is cost effective for a laptop.

[Lyndon]

Yes,
I agree that probably the best is to have something outside the computer for better sound.  But, since I bought a cheap sound card off eprey when I couldn't get the on board Realtek to work, I may throw it in this wet, winter weekend to give it a shot.
I had read that this chipset: CMI8768
Was not bad for sound at all, and if I flash it with the newest firmware, it takes it up a notch.  For ten bucks, I would say it is worth opening up the Antec tower. No?
http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/PCI/CMI8768

[boead]

Yeah, I agree. For $10 its likely real good.

I have had this device for some time. I use it here and there. It actually sounds good, real good. I use the stock Windows USB audio device driver (2 channel only) and unmap it from the dreaded Win Kernel. With Foobar2k it sounds excellent.
M-Audio Sonica Theater
http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/articles/show/465
Look on eBay, I’ve seen them for around $50 along with other models from M-Audio.