Microsoft Sound Mapper Missing???
Mike Rivers
get any audio out of the speakers or headphone jack. Curiously,
Microsoft Sound Mapper is no longer listed as an audio device in the
Windows (XP) Sounds setup or as an audio device in Audacity or Sound
Forge that I have installed. There's signs of life - the meters move but
nothing comes out the speakers or headphone jack.
I can select Realtek (the built-in sounc card) as the audio device, and
that used to work fine, but it doesn't now. I don't have any other audio
devices (like a USB audio I/O) that I can plug in to try.
Could I have lost the Realtek/Microsoft driver?
Soundhaspriority
which is the origin of legends of Windows systems that decay with use.
However, it seems as if your netbook may have an OEM customization which
might have unintentionally made it fragile. I have never had Microsoft Sound
Mapper listed in the "XP Sounds and Audio Devices Properties" panel, but my
XP versions are the standard OEM distribution.
Perhaps I might ask, are you sure Sound Mapper was listed in the XP panel?
Also, from "XP Sounds and Audio Devices Properties", access the tab
"Sounds", and attempt to play an XP system sound. If you don't hear
something, it is indicative of more basic problems. If you do hear
something, then an obscure Sound Mapper problem becomes more plausible.
Also, from the System-->Hardware-->Device Manager tab, expand "Sound, video,
and game controllers", and check that your hardware is listed without yellow
question marks.
Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511
"Mike Rivers" <mri...@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
news:hpgh4b$t6k$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Les Cargill
I'd go to Control Panel and look for you, but my arms aren't that
long. There should be a CAB file on disk, - if not, download it. Let
us just hope it is not an infant mortality problem.
:)
--
Les Cargill
geoff
What devices show if you go to Settings | Control Panel| Sounds and Audio
Devices | Audio or | Hardware.
Maybe it has different descriptions...
geoff
Mike Rivers
> Perhaps I might ask, are you sure Sound Mapper was listed in the XP panel?
Well, I thought so, but maybe not. I don't have another computer to
compare it to
out here. But I looked there because Sound Mapper used to show up as a
choice
in Sound Forge and when it didn't, I went looking in the likely place.
However, I uninstalled the Realtek audio using the Device Manager, then
rebooted
and let it find the new hardware. After that, WinAmp worked, Sound Forge
worked,
and Microsoft Sound Mapper shows up as a choice in Sound Forge but not in
the Control Panel Sounds window. So maybe it's never there.
Just another computer mystery.
Soundhaspriority
If this turns out to be a recurring problem, you might try uninstalling
without using the driver packag uninstall as follows:
In System-->Hardware-->Device Manager tab->Sound, video, and game
controllers-->Realtek,
click uninstall, and reboot. The system will find the hardware again.
As to what provoked it, did you attempt to have WinAmp and Sound Forge
active at the same time? This can cause resource lock problems. The apps and
driver are supposed to handle this, but if there are corresponding bugs in
the Realtek driver, and one or both of the apps, it can produce a kind of
magically bad combination that stops it from working.
Recommendation: If it recurs, change your usage pattern so that both of
these apps are not running simultaneously.
Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511
geoff
Naa - the Control Panel window Audio device(s) is ARE what other apps may
describe as MS Sound Mapper. The mapper in turn maps to the assigned
device(s). The alternative (as in SF) is to map to the device directly,
rather than via the MS Mapper...
geoff
geoff
Arny Krueger
> However, I uninstalled the Realtek audio using the Device
> Manager, then rebooted
> and let it find the new hardware. After that, WinAmp
> worked, Sound Forge worked,
> and Microsoft Sound Mapper shows up as a choice in Sound
> Forge but not in the Control Panel Sounds window. So
> maybe it's never there.
> Just another computer mystery.
IME, if the device driver for the one and only device on the PC stops
operating, then the mapper goes away with it.
The mystery is why the driver went away, and why it had to be reinstalled to
come back.
If the hardware had a temporary glitch, the driver would usually reinstall
it during the next boot.
IME the most likely cause of audio driver weirdness is Microsoft's Windows
Update. It gets confused by some Realtek and CMI audio interfaces and has
been known to download and attempt to download and install the wrong driver.
That breaks the previous driver. However, I haven't seen that happen for a
year or more.
Mike Rivers
> If this turns out to be a recurring problem, you might try uninstalling
> without using the driver packag uninstall as follows:
>
> In System-->Hardware-->Device Manager tab->Sound, video, and game
> controllers-->Realtek,
>
> click uninstall, and reboot. The system will find the hardware again.
That's exactly what I did.
> As to what provoked it, did you attempt to have WinAmp and Sound Forge
> active at the same time? This can cause resource lock problems.
I might have done that in my thrashing around, but the first symptom was
that
WinAmp (the only program open at the time) didn't have audio output even
though
it appeared that it was playing.
I'm thinking that something I did over the weekend may have caused a
problem. I picked
up a Plextor USB CD-RW drive at a hamfest for $2 so I could have a CD to
use with the
netbook. Plextor drives of that period (this one is stamped 2003 on its
label) had firmware
that supported a utility that they supplied with the dirive that, among
other things, did some
basic quality checks on a CD-R. I put out a call for a copy of the
PlexTools installer (it's no
longer on the Plextor web site, having been replaced by a new version
that supports their
DVD drives, and no longer does the QC tests) and received a few versions
of different
ages. While each version recognized the drive, none supported the
quality tests. I suspect
that this model simply didn't have the firmware to support it.
I've been a good boy, setting a Windows restore point before installing
each version, and
I've been using Revo Uninstaller to remove programs since it looks
through the registry for
traces that the program's own uninstall misses. Revo sets a restore
point before it goes to work.
But the last time around, I forgot to set a restore before installing
the program, and I tripped up running Revo, hitting the "restart the
computer now" button by mistake after the Plextor uninstaller ran,
before Revo had a chance to go through the registry. When I tried to restore
to the point before uninstalling PlexTools, Windows said it couldn't
restore to that point.
Anyway, I checked things out and it seemed that I still had audio, but
maybe I didn't check everything. Hopefully this won't be a recurring
problem. It hasn't been, net.
Mike Rivers
> IME the most likely cause of audio driver weirdness is Microsoft's Windows
> Update. It gets confused by some Realtek and CMI audio interfaces and has
> been known to download and attempt to download and install the wrong driver.
> That breaks the previous driver. However, I haven't seen that happen for a
> year or more.
Since this computer is off more than it's on, I have automatic updates
turned off (and even on computers where it's turned on, I always look
first before installing updates) and it hasn't had
an update in a few weeks.
Arny Krueger
The second most likely way that a driver gets broken is a little more scary.
Permanent, unrecovered hard drive error.
How full is the hard drive? How often defragged?
Laurence Payne
wrote:
>IME the most likely cause of audio driver weirdness is Microsoft's Windows
>Update. It gets confused by some Realtek and CMI audio interfaces and has
>been known to download and attempt to download and install the wrong driver.
>That breaks the previous driver. However, I haven't seen that happen for a
>year or more.
It's often worth searching out an older driver. The "improvement" in
a newer version is often to disable the internal WaveOut Mix (or
whatever they call it) recording source, which is very useful for
direct recording from e.g. Spotify or an online radio station.
Arny Krueger
news:othpr5l3fihb160o8...@4ax.com
Agreed. I suspect removal of this feature was stimulated by IP concerns.
Mike Rivers
> The second most likely way that a driver gets broken is a little more scary.
> Permanent, unrecovered hard drive error.
> How full is the hard drive? How often defragged?
Not much chance of that. It's 160 GB with 121 GB free. I was defragging
fairly often when I was cleaning off the junk that came with the computer so
it's been defragged several times in the past month.
Mike Rivers
wrote:
> So here I am in a hotel room with my new netbook computer, and I can't
> get any audio out of the speakers or headphone jack. Curiously,
> Microsoft Sound Mapper is no longer listed as an audio device in the
> Windows (XP) Sounds setup or as an audio device in Audacity or Sound
> Forge that I have installed. There's signs of life - the meters move but
> nothing comes out the speakers or headphone jack.
I didn't figure out what was happening, but I discovered what was
causing the problem. I had my MP3 player plugged into a USB port to
charge it when the audio output disappeared. When I rebooted after
unplugging it, the audio returned. I plugged it in, and the audio went
away (and stayed away even after unplugging it) until I rebooted
again.
I've had the same player plugged into my other computers at home and
haven't had this problem, though I don't know if it affects the
internal sound card since I don't use it on the other computers. Just
another quirk.
Soundhaspriority
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have a driver on the machine that incorrectly recognizes the player as a
device.
Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511
Soundhaspriority
> So here I am in a hotel room with my new netbook computer, and I can't
> get any audio out of the speakers or headphone jack.
I'm in a hotel room now too, and don't need the audio to jerk off to my
collection of movies.
These damn Hiltons charge way too much for pretty poor pornos- no animals or
nothing interesting.
http://robertmorein.blogspot.com/
"I don't really have a replacement career, it's a very gnawing thing."
Robert Morein
Dresher, PA
(310) 237-6511
(215) 646-4894
habibav...@btinternet.com
Gary Eickmeier
<habibav...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:68c4be08-3f6b-4ff2...@googlegroups.com...
Rt Click My Computer, Manage, Device Manager - Sound, Video and Game
Controllers -
check for drivers missing or update as needed
Start, Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices - all of the controls for
your sound system -
check for something muted by chance
Gary Eickmeier
Mike Rivers
> At the risk of being presumptuous
to was just over four years old. I don't even remember what I did to get
it working again. but it works now, and it didn't take me four years to
figure out.
--
For a good time, visit http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com
Gary Eickmeier
"Mike Rivers" <mm1...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:lirk54$bvr$1...@dont-email.me...
>
>> At the risk of being presumptuous
>
> Do you realize that the post (of mine) that you responded to the reply to
> was just over four years old. I don't even remember what I did to get it
> working again. but it works now, and it didn't take me four years to
> figure out.
Gary
Peter Larsen
> Gary
Kind regards
Peter Larsen
Gary Eickmeier
"Peter Larsen" <dig...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:53516f1a$0$19191$c3e8da3$1e10...@news.astraweb.com...
Gary
Mike Rivers
> Er...ah... News server? ISP?
Did you guys see my ORIGINAL message pop up here recently? I didn't. I
only saw a reply to it. Google keeps stuff forever, so it might have
just caught the eye of habibav...@btinternet.com who decided to be
helpful.
It's not unusual for someone who isn't a regular here to reply to an old
message, particularly when he's coming from Google Groups (which he
was). It's one of the reasons why some people look down on users who
read this newsgroup as a Google group. I sometimes do, myself, when the
news host that I use, Eternal September, gets constipated.
Ron C
browser for google groups, g-mail, and cross posting. Seems
most of the worthless or irritating stuff comes from those categories.
Posts with all three flags usually aren't worth opening let alone replying
to. Seems to help sort things out a bit. [YMMV]
One can get quite creative with message filters in Thunderbird.
==
Later...
Ron Capik
--
Gary Eickmeier
> Did you guys see my ORIGINAL message pop up here recently? I didn't. I
> only saw a reply to it. Google keeps stuff forever, so it might have just
> caught the eye of habibav...@btinternet.com who decided to be helpful.
>
> It's not unusual for someone who isn't a regular here to reply to an old
> message, particularly when he's coming from Google Groups (which he was).
> It's one of the reasons why some people look down on users who read this
> newsgroup as a Google group. I sometimes do, myself, when the news host
> that I use, Eternal September, gets constipated.
in it, just the question, so I thought it was from him from the 16th. This
is really strange. I have seen this problem in other groups, where someone
posts a question with the same title as a 5 year old post had, and the
service places it underneath the original thread rather than as a new one.
This has caught a lot of people off guard. But I haven't seen it in this
group before.
Gary
Peter Larsen
> Well, the really odd thing is that habibi's OP post did not have any
> answer in it, just the question, so I thought it was from him from
> the 16th. This is really strange.
the first to end up following up to an old post, it can even be seen as
relevant if it has no follow-ups or solutions.