Vista SP1 Sound Issues

A common problem after the upgrade to Vista Service Pack 1 is that the sound no longer works, and the sound manager shows the following message:

Sound Card Not Installed

While Microsoft has a knowledgebase page about this, it’s far from adequate, and in my experience, doesn’t work. (I’ve upgraded to SP1 recently).

• The first step you should take is to reboot your pc - just in case the upgrade didn’t quite finish. It’s unlikely that this will make any difference, but you should do it anyway.

• Check that the driver is installed, and try to update it. For this, click the Start orb, and enter “Device Manager” into the search bar. Load up the top result. Windows will ask for administrator permission to continue. Once it’s loaded, you should be met by a list of components of your pc. Click the little + next to Sound, Video and Game Controllers, in the list that shows up should be your sound card. If there is a little triangle next to it’s icon, with a !, then the driver is not working correctly. Either way, try updating the sound driver, by right clicking on the device, and selecting update driver. Windows should guide you through an update process.

• If Windows says your driver is up to date, you need to try a reinstall. Right click on the device again, and select uninstall driver. Follow the instructions, and make sure “Delete the driver” is cleared, ie not selected.

Once the driver is uninstalled, select (from the top menu) Actions >> Scan for hardware changes. This should bring up an installer for the driver.

That’s all exactly the same that Microsoft suggested, although in easier language (I hope). It didn’t work for me, so this is what I did:

• Navigated to the website of the creator of my computer (Lenovo).
• Clicked Drivers and Downloads
• Inputted the information from my laptop
• Downloaded the audio driver manually
• Extracted it manually
• Installed it manually (after uninstalling the old one)
• Rebooted

Which fixed it up perfectly for me, and I hope that it does the same for you. Reinstalling the driver manually is the best way to shake problems like this

This is a continuation from my previous post ranting about this.