Foo - Need some computer help.

So last night the HD with my OS on it died. I ended up reformatting my other HD and installing XP on it. I've got just about everything working except for sound. It isn't recognizing any sound devices. I know I have one, because it's integrated into the motherboard. Any help would be much appreciated.:)

Is it a specific type of computer? (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc)

You're missing the driver for the sound device. Without knowing your system, it's anyone's guess.. but if you have a make/model then you could probably get what you need from the maker's website.

It's a computer that I built up a few years back, the manufacturer of the motherboard is no longer around. Looking through the mobo manual it looks to be a SIS AC97 audio device. I'll see what I can find.

You will most likely need to find the motherboard maker's driver for your sound chip.

That's the problem with onboard, they aren't all the same implementation wise, so the drivers compensate for that.

Found the drivers and have sound again. Now if I hadn't have lost all of my data....

Sorry to hear about your crash, Polara. There are a number of relatively cheap data/disk recovery software packages out there- have you tried any to get your data back?

Most of the important stuff was on the HD that offed itself. The stuff I lost on the drive I had to format was mostly just music/pics, and software that I can reinstall.

Ah- OK- still a pain though- my sympathies. <three words: U. Bun. Tu. ;)>

What exactly is Ubuntu?

It's a Linux distribution- probably the best and easiest of all the Linux distros to install/use/maintain, IMO. You can read about it here (http://www.ubuntu.com/). It comes with a lot of apps- OpenOffice (an open-source version of MS Office), lots of games (Sudoku!!!), and lots of utilities, and there are many more freebies to download.

Generally, Linux (and more generally, Unix) is more stable than Windows, which is why I prefer it. I do a lot of disk and OS-intensive computing sometimes for days on end, and Linux definitely holds up better. Also, I am particularly fond of the concept of open-source.

Linux does a lot of things, but I don't think it will miraculously save a dying HD.

Indeed no- I wasn't suggesting that! But it is an easier OS to use and maintaine once you get into it.

/me runs Ubuntu on both of his working systems, and his primary system ONLY boots Ubuntu

/me doesn't recommend Ubuntu for a newbie that runs various Windows apps, it can be a pain, unless there's a Linux guru ready to hold their hand, or they're willing to spend a while researching stuff.

However, what you CAN do is, when you put on the XP partition, make it about half the size of your hard drive, then put Ubuntu on in the rest. Then, you've got the choice - if you can't get something working in Ubuntu, you can reboot and go into Windows instead.

/me runs Ubuntu on both of his working systems, and his primary system ONLY boots Ubuntu

/me doesn't recommend Ubuntu for a newbie that runs various Windows apps, it can be a pain, unless there's a Linux guru ready to hold their hand, or they're willing to spend a while researching stuff.

However, what you CAN do is, when you put on the XP partition, make it about half the size of your hard drive, then put Ubuntu on in the rest. Then, you've got the choice - if you can't get something working in Ubuntu, you can reboot and go into Windows instead.

Good advice that. I wouldn't go full Linux on a box unless you are comfy with it. I am, and have dual-boot boxes, because I still use some Windows apps- just can't get completely out of the MS world :rolleyes:

Is the bad HD physically dead? Or just crashed with corrupted directory data? I've found that EasyRecoveryPro from OnTrack can rescue most if not all files from a drive that's had so much data-corruption that no other utility can even find a single file.

Also I never store data on the same drive as the OS. Here's how I typically have my systems partitioned:

Drive1/Part1 = BootXP
Drive1/Part2 = BootVista
Drive1/Part3 = BootUbuntu
Drive1/Part4 = BootOSX
Drive1/Part5 = Applications

Drive2 = UserData
Drive3 = UserDataBackup

The data-drive is typically mirrored (RAID-1) with another drive so I have real-time backups.

Danno, you are so farkin' organized. :beer: :)

Question to any of you who responded: How "easy" is it to go from MS OS to Linux, for someone who used to understand Unix command structure (about 13-15 years ago)?

If you understand Unix commands, that will help you a LOT, you can figure out stuff where the howtos are missing things quite easily.

However, with modern mainstream distros such as Ubuntu, there's enough GOOD howtos out there that you pretty much just have to know how to get an xterm (in Ubuntu, gnome-terminal is accessible via Applications>Accessories>Terminal,) and then you can follow the directions, and (especially if your distro is the distro du jour, which Ubuntu is right now) the directions actually work!

Is the bad HD physically dead? Or just crashed with corrupted directory data? I've found that EasyRecoveryPro from OnTrack can rescue most if not all files from a drive that's had so much data-corruption that no other utility can even find a single file.

Also I never store data on the same drive as the OS. Here's how I typically have my systems partitioned:

Drive1/Part1 = BootXP
Drive1/Part2 = BootVista
Drive1/Part3 = BootUbuntu
Drive1/Part4 = BootOSX
Drive1/Part5 = Applications

Drive2 = UserData
Drive3 = UserDataBackup

The data-drive is typically mirrored (RAID-1) with another drive so I have real-time backups.

I'm not near that organized.

Drive 1, Partition 1) OS/apps
Drive1, Partition2) Games
Drive 2 and Drive 3) data/crap

Danno, you are so farkin' organized. :beer: :)

Question to any of you who responded: How "easy" is it to go from MS OS to Linux, for someone who used to understand Unix command structure (about 13-15 years ago)?

Not too bad really VV, the only hard part is installing drivers.

My experience with trying to get a Cisco 802.11 card working on a Dell notebook running Fedora Core 1 (RedHat variant) was nothing short of a royal PITA.

Other than that though, the computer ran great and was reasonably easy to use. This is coming from a person who has only a few years of Unix experience...mostly in the form of Solaris. My expertise in command line OSs is DOS (ever built a User Environment entirely out of batch files?) and Vax/VMS (long story), not Unix.

I did, that was the 300GB I dumped today.

I realized I spent way too much time collecting porn, so I decided to get rid of it all....well almost all....I still have a small gallery of Ms Beauchamp (small meaning "less than a GB")

VV - the other good thing about the Ubuntu install disk is that you can now run Ubuntu from it to have a look before you install anything.

I just installed it but was sitting reading bikeforums in firefox while it was installing.

I have to find out how to get my wireless headphones working with flash in firefox though - it found everything on installation, and I can swap between my onboard card and my usb headphones everywhere except the flash in the browser. If you don't have anything unusual, the drivers will probably work first time (which you can check with the install disk without installing anything)

IMO, the new linuxes are pretty easy. if your computer hardware doesn't have anything really wierd going on, then installing it and getting linux up and running and surfing the net, checking email, basic word processing, spreadsheets, etc... are easy as pie. I have several linux boot cd's that boot from the cd rom straight to the desktop and have working internet connections and relatively high resolutions with pretty backgrounds and a full office suite. If my HD died I could be relatively functional until I found the time to replace it.

as far as your sound driver, i'd recommend going into safe mode (F8 at startup) and doing to the device manager and removing anything regarding sound, then reboot and do not let it go to windows, as it's booting up go in to the BIOS and disable anything regarding sound, then boot up all the way into windows, let it totally finish booting up and then reboot and go back into the BIOS, re-enable the sound stuff you want (i'd leave the ac97 modem portion disabled unless you have dial up or fax needs), then boot it back up into windows and try to install the sound driver again.

^ Oh, the above is in case a normal attempt at installing the sound driver failed.

and if it continues to fail perhaps try moving the IRQs around in the BIOS. if i leave my computer up to the PNP when i reinstall XP it will stick the ac97 audio and my DLINK wifi card on the same IRQ and one or neither will work until i put one on their own IRQ

Is the bad HD physically dead? Or just crashed with corrupted directory data? I've found that EasyRecoveryPro from OnTrack can rescue most if not all files from a drive that's had so much data-corruption that no other utility can even find a single file.

Also I never store data on the same drive as the OS. Here's how I typically have my systems partitioned:

Drive1/Part1 = BootXP
Drive1/Part2 = BootVista
Drive1/Part3 = BootUbuntu
Drive1/Part4 = BootOSX
Drive1/Part5 = Applications

Drive2 = UserData
Drive3 = UserDataBackup

The data-drive is typically mirrored (RAID-1) with another drive so I have real-time backups.

The HD is definitely physically dead. It was making that wonderful dropping sound continuously and having writing errors, and then it just stopped and the computer froze. Turned off the computer, tried to turn it back on and it shows me the wonderful boot from cd prompt.