how do i solev a confliction between my sound card and my modem?

Question

This is so gay.. just out of the blew my sound stopped working. i thought i must have just messed up the sound chip, so i went over to Comp usa.. they told me to restore my hardware.. so i did, and the sound chip started working again.. then try to stop again.. so i looked at my sound settings, it says i have no sound device installed and its trying to use my modem to act as a sound card. so i went out and bought 1. It said i had a sound device installed and everything. it worked great for a couple of days.. but today when i tried to turn the sound up because the voices on a video wasn't working it said i had no mixer installed. looked at my sound settings and sure enough, "no sound device is installed". but i can still listen to music, just not voices! somebody told me it was a confliction between my sound card and modem.. Will somebody please just tell me how to fix this stupid thing!

Brand new computer, never had a sounds card before.. it was the stock sound chip that stoped working first. and its a PCI slot. Its mind boggling.. i have no clue what is going on with it. and yes i installed it because it worked and i made sure it was it said that it was installed and being used.

im not an idiot. I didn't buy a new modem, i bought a new sound card. but you did help me understand why you can select it as a sound device tho. And, no it was not muted or turned down all the the way.

Answer 1

If you just installed something (sound card or network card), this might be the solution. There might be a confliction in your Devices. When you install components to a computer, certain memory spaces are allocated in RAM to give each component memory (quick access to the CPU instead of copying the data over every time). Sometimes two components share the memory address. I would go into device managers, and look around to see if the hardware you are looking for is installed. The view tab will show you the IRQ addresses.

More information would be helpful. What kind of connection is the sound and modem? Most of them are PCI nowadays. I am not a expert on this subject, but maybe there was a card that was previously installed on the PCI that you used for the soundcard? and when you took it out, the drivers were not uninstalled and the system is reading it as a network card?

I really do not see where the problem of a sound card and network card conflicting if you did not install anything, unless you did some customizing in the device manager or happened to obtain a virus that messed up your addresses. Just my guess...

Here is a forum about the problem:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=42031

Good luck!

Answer 2

Its possible that you have one of those old modems that sometimes dont wanna act right with newer sound cards. Try changing out the modem to something more up 2 date.

But before you do that, try changing the modem and or sound card to a different pci slot and and that should fix your problem. I cant remember correctly but there is something I remember I was told back in the days about 2 pci slots on older computers that share some sort of info or irq and can sometimes cause device conflicts.

Answer 3

I wish this place would allow for multiple replies, instead of having to edit an old one.

So then, with the new PCI sound card, it installs properly and then works, but later on it just dies? Something must be messing up your registry settings then. Perhaps a virus or trojan.
With Windows 9x and XP, any resource conflicts would show up under Device Manager, and your sound device wouldn't work at all.
Your sound card installer would have produced some kind of error too.
Therefore, I don't think this is a conflict problem.
If you have XP, I'd suggest a System Restore.
You're not using any kind of Registry cleaner?
Maybe it screwed something up.
Uninstall all the sound card software and try again. When it dies again, use System Restore to restore your old registry settings.
If the sound card works, you know that you have some program or trojan thats messing with your sound card's registry settings.

Barring all that, since the computer's new, can't you return it under warranty? Just yell at them and tell them that your motherboard's shot.