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You should note that the sound card, like the video card, can also be built into the motherboard. If there is a free ISA or PCI slot, you should be able to disable the inbuilt card - in the BIOS, or by setting a motherboard jumper, and/or in the Windows Device Manager - and then be able to install an ISA or PCI card.
If an AGP video card is built into the motherboard, you will only be able to disable it and add a new card if there is a free AGP slot on the motherboard. Some motherboards that have inbuilt AGP video cards do not have an AGP slot. If you want to use a video card on such a motherboard, it will have to be a PCI card - if the motherboard has a spare PCI slot.
You should also note that an AGP slot can only be fitted with an AGP video/graphics card - not a sound card, modem or network card, etc.
You have purchased a new motherboard and installed it in your Windows XP system; successfully for the most part, but whenever you try to install a sound card or network card, and then boot the system you get the message, "An error has occurred during the installation of this device. The data is invalid." For some reason, you have not been able to install an AGP video card, but you have been able to install a PCI video card, You have also tried unsuccessfully to install two different makes of network and sound card. The other measures you have taken to rectify the problem are: - reflashed the BIOS with the latest update, and tried replacing Windows XP with its forerunner, Windows 2000. Because the same error occurs with both versions of Windows, you suspect that the problem has to be hardware-related.
The usual cause of this problem in Windows 2000/XP systems is Registry keys that are set as read-only.
Note that you should back up the system or at least create a restore point in System Restore (to find it in Windows XP, right-click My Computer => click Properties) before making changes to the Windows Registry, because if you make a mistake Windows might not be able to start up.
From the Start menu, click Run and enter regedit to run the Registry Editor. Open the following - Keys => HKey_Local_machine => System => CurrentControlSet => Enum => PCI.
You will see several keys in this form - Ven_xxxx - where xxxx represents a string such as - 1102&Dev_004&Subsys_00011103&Rev_04.
In each of these folders there is another folder that has a long numerical name. Open each of these folders, and look for the DeviceDesc entry that matches the type of hardware that you are trying unsuccessfully to install. Use the right mouse button to click on the Ven_xxxx entry for that device, and click Permissions. If it is set to read-only, then that is the cause of the problem. To rectify it, change it to Allow Full Control.
Note that you enter regedit in the Start => Search... box in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to open the Registry Editor and to find System Restore also enter its name in the Search... box to be presented with a clickable link that opens it.
Click here! to go to the information on this website on System Restore in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Finding the settings (which drives to create restore points for and how much disk space to reserve for them, etc.) for System Restore in Vista and Win7 is more difficult than in XP, because unlike in XP they are not all in the same place as where restore points can be restored.
Remember that ISA adapter cards are no longer in production, and the latest motherboards do not have ISA slots. So, if you buy an ISA sound card from an auction site such as eBay, you should make sure that the motherboard supports it.
Auction sites such as eBay are an excellent source for computer hardware and software, especially if it is elderly or out of production, because sellers offload their old equipment when they by the latest equipment.
Visit the Motherboard section of this website for more information on the ISA, PCI, and AGP expansion slots and their cards.
Like every other device inside or peripheral to a computer, a sound card requires software device drivers in order to function.
A CD containing the driver for a range of operating systems is almost always bundled with the product itself. However, the drivers that come with the product are probably out of date. The latest drivers should be available from the product's website.
That is why you should only ever purchase a device if its manufacturer has a website from which updated drivers can be downloaded. Such websites usually provide free downloadable driver updates and valuable advice about how to counter problems with their products.
It is always a good idea to obtain the latest device drivers for any product, because the latest versions of other drivers, such as DirectX and OpenGL, used for running games, might not be compatible with the older drivers for your product, or newer programs, and, as such might cause system crashes.
The sound card in an ordinary multimedia PC should support Direct Sound - the sound component of Windows DirectX - and the A3D and EAX standards to be able to get the best full-duplex 3D sound reproduction from games and movies.
If you are purchasing a sound card from a shop, the specifications and the supported operating systems should be listed on the box.
Installing the latest drivers for a device can sometimes cause problems, or even render the device or the whole system unusable. If this is the case in a Windows 95/98/Me system, uninstall the device in Safe mode (Safe Mode in Windows XP/Vista) by pressing the F8 key at startup to bring up the boot menu, and then choose it from the list. Open the Device Manager and remove the device, then allow Windows to reinstall the drivers, and, if necessary, install an earlier version.
Windows XP has a Roll Back Driver feature in the Device Manager that allows you to roll the system back to the state it was in before you installed a new driver file. You can also use its System Restore feature to roll the whole system back to a former state. For example, I removed one of the two driver entries for the integrated graphics-chip driver on my laptop PC, thinking that the driver was duplicated, but two instances were required, because Windows XP tried to install new hardware the next time I booted and installed a Windows driver instead of the graphics-chip manufacturer's driver (Intel), so I just restored a restore point in System Restore that pre-dated the removal and the Device Manager was restored to its previous state.
Visit the Recovering Windows XP page on this site for more information on System Restore and the Roll Back Driver feature and other ways of recovering that version of Windows.
Windows Vista also has the System Restore and the Roll Back Driver features.
Roll Back Troublesome Device Drivers in Windows Vista -
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/...
COMPUTER PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONSCLICK HERE! to go to an index of pages on this website that deal with computer-related problems. |
Sound cards that plug into a computer via an external USB 2.0/USB3.0 connection are available and are growing in popularity - especially with laptop users.
The Audigy 2 NX from Creative was a good product, now archived in Creative's support website. Since the Audigy 2 NX became available, two excellent new external USB sound cards were released - the Audigy 2 NX from Creative and the PSC805 Aurilium from Philips.
Small USB dongle sound cards are now available from the very inexpensive Dynamode External USB 2.0 Sound Card (only £2 from pcworld.co.uk in October 2011) to more expensive models such as the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi GO! Pro USB Sound Card (£35.70 from the same online store). Just plug the device into a USB port on a laptop or desktop PC and plug your speakers, headphones or microphone into the relevant port on the dongle.
To find the latest products, use the search query usb sound cards in a web search engine. You can specify a manufacturer in the query, such as Philips and Creative.
The features of external USB sound cards are usually limited compared to internal PCI cards, but this is not the case with the USB cards listed above, because they lack very little in comparison. However, neither card is supplied with DVD playback software, so a pricey six-channel version of PowerDVD, or one of its equals, would be required.
The software included with these cards is minimal, but, that said, there is no better sound Control Panel than the one that is installed with the drivers for the Philips device.
Both the Creative and Philips cards support surround sound, with Creative's card supporting 7.1 surround sound, and the Philips card supporting 5.1 surround sound. Both cards have excellent EAX2 support for in-game acoustic effects and DVD playback.
A Musical Instrument Digital Interface - MIDI - is required in order to connect a musical instrument such as a Roland RD170 Piano Keyboard.
On a PC, you can make use of a USB MIDI device, such as the Tascam US-122, or a PCMCIA PC card device for a laptop or notebook PC, such as the E-MU 1616.
The PC used to produce the music should have the correct sound production software package(s) installed. Sibelius and Transcribe are available for both Windows and the Apple Mac platforms. There are many more such packages that you can identify and research by making use of a search engine. You can also use it to find information and vendors for any of the products mentioned above.
MP3 is short for Mpeg Audio Layer 3. It is a sound compression standard developed by the same group responsible for the mpeg movie compression standards - the Moving Pictures Expert Group.
Compression standards are either lossless or lossy.
Lossless compression reduces the file by applying 'shorthand' to the code, and lossy compression applies trickery to remove sound data in such a way that the human ear won't notice that it's missing.
MP3 isn't free. The decoders are free, but developers have to pay royalties to use an MP3 encoder. That is why Microsoft does include a decoder but doesn't include an encoder with the Windows Media Player.
A licence is always required to provide an MP3 encoder, because the Fraunhofer Institute owns the patents. But thankfully this state of affairs doesn't seem to prevent many programmers giving away MP3 encoders/decoders as freeware.
There are many free encoders. A web search for them will turn up as many as twenty. The best known of them is called Lame from http://lame.sourceforge.net/. However, if you want an encoder plug-in for the Windows Media Player, it will cost around £5/$9.
There are many pages on the web that provide information on how to convert one sound format into another. You can find them by entering suitable search queries in a search engine. Here is a page I found on converting vinyl records to MP3 and audio CDs:
How To Record Vinyl Records (singles and LPs) to MP3 files and Audio CDs - http://www.br0wn.co.uk/vinyltocd.htm
Many people would like to convert their vinyl records to a recordable CD/DVD format such as MP3. If you want to use a laptop computer to do that, if it doesn't have a line-in port, you have to equip it with an external USB adapter or use an external USB sound card that is the equivalent of a standard PCI sound card.
"Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to: Record live audio. Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs. Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files. Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together. Change the speed or pitch of a recording. And more! See the complete list of features." - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
MP3 is now old technology, and consequently several alternatives have been developed. The offer from Microsoft is Windows Media Audio - WMA - which comes as part of the Windows Media Player.
MP3 itself has been upgraded to MP3Pro, which allows higher compression ratios while maintaining high quality sound reproduction. It has backward and forward compatibility. You can play MP3Pro files on an MP3 player and MP3 files on an MP3Pro player.
There is also the strangely named compressor called Ogg Vorbis from http://www.vorbis.com/ - an open source audio compressor that has no licensing or royalty problems. It is also said to be better than MP3, MP3Pro, and WMA at the same compression ratios. The website has a "Dare to compare" challenge that you can try.
The reason Ogg Vorbis hasn't taken off is because, unlike WMA, it has no rights control to prevent people copying music Napster-style, which obviously makes WMA far more attractive to the music industry.
To listen to digital audio broadcasts (DAB) requires a digital radio, which have come down in price significantly since they first became available. They are now not much more expensive than standard radios. If you want to use a computer to listen to digital audio broadcasts some PCI TV tuner cards or USB external TV tuners also allow you to listen to them.
To find out more about DAB, enter digital audio broadcasts as the search query in a web search engine.
If you want to connect a MiniDisc player to a PC in order to transfer MP3 sound files to a portable MiniDisc player, you should purchase one with optical input and output connectors, and a new high-end (expensive) sound card that also has optical input and output.
Both of those optical devices will not make use of analog to digital converters, but will transfer the digital output directly to a digital input port.
This is necessary because many sound cards do an inadequate job of digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion.
Analog sound and video reproduction is the older standard that came into existence before digital sound and video reproduction.
Unless you have a digital monitor, your will have an analog monitor, and it will have a digital to analog converter to convert the video card's digital signal to analog in order to display it. Therefore, the ideal when transferring sound and video files is to have digital devices at both ends, thereby avoiding the conversion process that tends to impair the reproduction.
Because most MiniDisc players are supplied with an optical digital lead, to stream audio output in real time from it to a computer requires a sound system such as Terratec's DMX Fire 24/96, which comes with the necessary software, and is equipped with optical input and output ports.
But if all you want to do is transfer audio (or data) output from a MiniDisc player to a computer for back-up purposes, you wouldn't want to spend £170/$280 for a sound system such as the one mentioned above. What you require is a device that acts as an intermediary between the MiniDisc player and the computer.
You can purchase a device such as AV-Land's DPC-2, which links the MiniDisc player to the computer via a USB port. This device costs about £75/$125.
Alternatively, you can purchase a sound card with S/PDIF input/output ports, and link it to the MiniDisc player via a device that converts the digital 7.1 surround sound S/PDIF signal from the sound card into a digital-optical signal used by the MiniDisc player. Sounds cards with S/PDIF input/output ports are available for around £30/$50. A conversion device costs about £40/$66.
7.1 surround sound systems, which have Dolby Digital decoders, are fed via an S/PDIF digital input, the cables for which are available in coaxial and optical versions.
7.1 surround sound systems, which have Dolby Digital decoders, are fed via an S/PDIF digital input, the cables for which are available in coaxial and optical versions.
Some motherboards provide a special bracket containing coaxial and/or optical S/PDIF ports that fits into an opening at the back of a computer's case. The bracket allows its own internal cables to be attached to the motherboard and external cables to be attached to the speakers.
It's also possible to buy motherboards that have an inbuilt S/PDIF port. Click here! to go to a page on this site containing an image of such a motherboard - the MSI RS480M2-IL - and its ports panel. It has a coaxial S/PDIF port.
To locate more information about any of these technical terms, you can enter them as search queries in a search engine. If there is more than a single term, enclose them within double quotation marks.
Ask at your local computer store, computer forums or some of the newsgroups, such as alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, for advice on the local sources of these devices.
How would I connect my tape recorder/player to the input of the sound card to record a cassette tape as a .wav file and then convert it to .cda files?
You can re-record cassettes on to audio CDs by using a number of programs including MusicMatch, Jukebox, and MP3 CD Maker.
For example, if you are using MusicMatch, you would input the sound from the Line In socket on your sound card, which can be connected to the output socket of your hi-fi. You can then save the tracks as .WAV files, and create a play list. You would then put a CD into your CD-R or CD-RW writer and record directly on to it. If you have a DVD writer, you would record to its disks, of which there are several different types.
See the Disk Drives section on this website for more information on CD and DVD drives and their media (discs).
If you want to find out about the technical details of how a sound card works, visit this article:
How Soundcards Work - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/sound-card.htm
And if you require more information about sound cards in general or a specific sound card, you can use a web search engine. - Just enter the name of the manufacturer (e.g., Creative), or the name of the sound card (e.g., Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme).
The links to reviews of the other components of a computer are also on this page. - http://www.techspot.com/reviews.shtml
There is no separate category for sound cards on the Expert Reviews website, so to find the reviews of them click here! to use a search link I created or enter sound cards in the expertreviews.co.uk website's Search box. There were several reviews of internal and external cards when I searched in December 2011.
Audacity - Window 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 - Free - 1.3MB - import all the major audio formats, edit, mix, and apply effects until you have created the masterpiece you probably fluked.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - Home page
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/latest/audacity-win.php/ - Download page
To locate more information about any of the hardware or software named or the technical terms used on this page, you can enter them as search queries in a search engine. If there is more than a single term, in order to locate specific links, enclose them within double quotation marks.
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