Sound problem with Dell 1525 sigmatel audio.

After doing a full wipe of the system and putting windows xp, everything seems to be working perfectly except the sound. I tried uninstalling the sound drivers, flashing the bios and yet I continue to get the following things:

In device manager, under sound, video and game controllers, it lists all the legacy codecs including sigmatel high definition audio codec. However sigmatel has an yellow explanation mark and upon clicking it for further details, it says the device cannot start.

Is there a solution to this? I know the sound card is not defective because it was working in vista. Maybe I need an intel bios revision? If so, I cannot find it because it's oem and dell has their own (which I have the latest for).

 

You didn't mention installing the MS UAA (Universal Audio Architecture) - KB888111. The Sigmatel audio on my 1520 wouldn't work in XP until I installed the UAA. Interestingly, nothing will happen as a result of installing UAA - but after you install it, if you right-click the yellow exclamation item and pick update drivers, then automatically install, the sound drivers should then be correctly installed. Good luck

 

It seems to be the new sound driver that's having an issue, possible conflicting with the new Microphone driver as well if you have that installed. I installed/update each of them, (mic and sound driver together so I can't really pin point, but so far with microphone driver uninstall it hasn't occurred yet ),a few days ago, and I got the same problem. To get the audio to function again, select the Sigmatel High Def Codec with the yellow exclamation mark, right click and click on "Uninstall", it will ask for confirmation, allow it. The computer does it's usual stuff ...blah blah blah. Once that is completely, go to the menu up at the top, (sorry I forgot which one it is, but there's only 3 please look through all of them), you will find a "scan for hardware Change", the system will detect the "New" hardware (new since you just uninstall the old one), and it will again does it's usual stuff, and tada, once it completed: you will hear that BEEP sound coming from your speak again.

EDIT: First try the patch mentioned by the above poster, that may be a more worthwhile solution if it does work.

 

Sorry for not mentioning it but I did install the UAA drivers. The problem seems a lot more intrinsic than simple drivers or maybe I did not install the drivers correctly. I have tried uninstalling and resintalling 50 times with slightly older drivers as well but that did not solve the problem.

I saw a thread in another forum regarding this and they suggested flashing the bios to the latest version but since it's OEM I have no idea which to get. The only one I flashed it to was Dell's official one from the site.

 

just a friendly bump

 

Oh, by uninstall I mean just go to device manager, right click on the device and select "uninstall", don't run the set up file. Instead do a "scan for hardware change", it will automatically reinstall the driver in the background, and after about a minute or so, you will hear the balloon tip pop sound which indicate the sound is working again. I know this is only a work around, but better than nothing.

Btw, do you happen to have the microphone driver installed, IntelliSonic?

 

I recently wiped the original vista and install xp pro on my new 1525. it's true that the sound drive for 1525 would have problem on xp system. However, simply find and install the sound drive for 1520 on your xp would solve this problem.

 

Can you direct me to the sound driver website, it seems there are conflicts with the ones I'm using. Thanks in advance.

 

hey im having the same problem with my vostro1500 and sp3, kinda frustrating I have tried a variety of different solutions, might just have to get back to sp2 somehow? (AHHH FORMAT) any suggestions would be helpful

 

XP SP3 is a little bit different beast. You know that QFE that installs the Microsoft HD Audio Bus Driver on XP SP2? You need the SP3 specific one of that. I don't know where to get it.

 

Yeah I have been trying the SP2 QFE I had no idea it was different for SP3, I am guessing I will just have to wait it out or format huh? Well thanks for the heads up atleast thats clarified..

 

this is from microsofts forum, posted by a user named Promathesh Mandal ill post back when i try it, hope this helps some one
"Facing Installation problem KB888111 in Windows XP SP3 RC1 ?




First extract all the content of 'kb888111xpsp2' with WinRAR, here you will find a folder named 'commonfiles'. This folder contain the 'Microsoft UAA Function Driver for High Definition Audio'.



After that you goto 'Device Manager' here you will find a unknown devices named 'PCI Device' in 'Other Devices' install 'Microsoft UAA Function Driver for High Definition Audio' for that device & after that install your sound device driver.



With Regards,

Promathesh Mandal."

 

No dice. (BUMP! I need help heh)

 

ok this is how i got it to work for anyone that cares, or needs to do it, i downloaded that modified MS HD audio hotfix, checked the properties on the current driver i had installed (one with exclamation point) deleted all the related files in sys32 and sys32/drivers, also got rid of everything in c:\dell, reason i made this (bad) decision is because the driver kept reinstalling itself everytime i uninstalled and I am not really a tech guy so i was getting frustrated on what to do, so after i did that, i uninstalled the driver, i scanned for hardware changes, it found the HD audio device, i pointed it to the UAA hotfix folder, it then asked for the stapi32.dll i believe, or something very similar, i then realized i had to redownload the dell driver for sigmatel, did that, extracted to c:\dell, then pointed the prompt to that folder, and bam, sound...so im guessing my main problem was not deleting the drivers previously associated with the audio device, hope this helps the original poster.... this thread sure did help me....


EDIT
besides C:\Dell here is what I deleted, hope nothing bad happens
c:\windows\system32
ctapo32.dll
ctppld.dll
ksproxy.ax
ksuser.dll
staco.dll
stapi32.dll
stapo32.dll
stapo.dll
stcplx.dll
wdmaud.drv


c:\windows\system32\drivers
drmk.sys
ks.sys
portcls.sys
stream.sys
stwrt.sys

then I used the modified UAA hotfix kb888111xpsp2.exe (extracted with winrar) with this original driver from dells website R171789.exe