AC97 & Flash Audio Broken - FIXED!
I interrupt our usual infrequent yet thoughtful posts with this technical How-To. If you are not experiencing audio trouble with your AC97 device - especially with Flash - then you can skip this post.
My audio using the AC97 integrated device was broken. It would play sounds from MP3 files, movies, and most games, but never would it play audio in Flash. No matter how much tinkering I done with the speaker configuration or with the drivers it simply wouldn’t play. Even more vexing is that I could right-click on the flash movie and watch the little audio bar in the microphone tab jump around, so I knew that sound was going through somewhere.
Installing the “update” from the Microsoft update site would break all sound on the computer. I would have to re-install the drivers from the Realtek web site in order to regain some sound. I know that it’s a bad idea to get drivers from MS update in the first place, but I was desperate for a solution.
Here’s how regain Flash audio and system sounds if you’re using an AC97 audio chip, and you’re running an NForce motherboard.
- Uninstall all software from Realtek, and all drivers for the AC97. This is a must
- Restart the computer, of course
- DO NOT reinstall any of the AC97 software
- Go to your motherboard manufacturer’s website and get the NForce audio drivers from their web site
- do not install the NForce audio drivers from the NVidia web site - THOSE DO NOT WORK
- Install those drivers that you obtained from your manufacturer’s web site.
- Restart the computer when prompted to do so
- Using that software, set up your speakers according to the speaker configuration that you own
Voila! You have all sound again.
Why was this a problem?
For me, the disc that came with my motherboard apparently did not have all of the required system drivers. I installed the NForce drivers from the CD, but it would never install audio drivers along with everything else. The auto-update software found on the CD would also not install any audio drivers.
So I installed the NForce drivers from the NVidia web site, but that didn’t do a thing for me. In fact, using those audio drivers caused me to have no sound at all.
Considering that everything on my system, including the BIOS, was calling the device an AC97 I figured that I should install the AC97 drivers. So I did. This did, in fact, give me sound, but only in a limited form. All system sounds were gone, audio would not play in Flash under any circumstances, and some other programs and a few games were also unable to play audio.
Still, I could play MP3s and movies and most games just fine, so I was “mostly” content.
Tonight I attempted to use the auto-update software that was shipped with my motherboard. Both MSI Live Update and MSI Live Monitor failed to connect to their web site. So I manually loaded it and downloaded the driver set myself, directly from the manufacturer’s web site.
Surprise surprise, this pack included audio drivers!
Sigh, such a simple thing to have caused me so much frustration.
~Steph
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