Re: Inspiron 1501 Headaches


"Bill Hileman" <discgolfdad@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"S.Lewis" <Gossamer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Bill Hileman" <discgolfdad@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I bought a pair of Inspiron 1501 laptops for my 10-year-old sons last
year (warranty has just expired recently). The Windows Update feature
never worked in that time span, but searches on the net for solutions
pretty much came up empty, so I didn't bother with that until recently.
The solution for that turned out to be using the O/S DVD and selecting
"upgrade" It took three hours of that, and another two hours of
downloading/installing 50 updates (93 MB) on both machines, and finally
that problem was (obviously) resolved. However, in the process, it has
disabled the audio devices on both machines. The system tray icon has
the wonderful red "X" and the tooltip says "no audio device installed."
Going to the device manager says it's installed and "working properly."
I've tried everything I can think of, including installing the drivers
from the drivers DVD, removing and auto-detecting, going directly to
Dell's support site and downloading/installing their drivers, all come
out with the exact same result. Nothing.

There was one KB article on the Dell site about this, specifically. It
said that after installing an "upgrade" and rebooting, that the sound
icon in the system tray would be disabled. Their solution? Simply go
to device manager and re-enable. Great! Except that it's not disabled
in device manager. Clearly something the upgrade did caused this on both
machines.

I was also having firewall problems with Windows Live OneCare but
finally got that straightened out with their firewall repair tool, so
now the ONLY thing wrong with these two laptops is the audio.

If anyone can help point me in the right direction, I would be eternally
grateful.

Bill "You can't get there from here" Hileman




That's a mess, especially now after the upgrade. I assume both are
running XP?

You might try reinstalling the chipset drivers and cpu drivers for S&G,
and then once again re-installing the audio drivers:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ServiceTag=&SystemID=INS_PNT_1501&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=

-OR-

http://tinyurl.com/2lz973

I'm concerned by your WinUpdate comments prior to the "OS upgrade" and
what that really means. Vista? Repair install of WinXP? Either of those
scenarios could hose things up a bit.

Since they're the kid's machines, you do have a complete factory image
restore option if you reached that point of frustration, but you'd have
to reinstall any apps/games they might have.

Since both are showing the same symptom (which is actually a good thing),
I'm guessing it's something unique to the AMD architecture of those
notebooks. Re-installing the chipset, CPU, and then audio drivers
shouldn't hurt a thing if I'm wrong (and shouldn't take much time to
attempt).

I appreciate the response, Stew. I finally managed to figure it out. I
started all this Friday night and burned the midnight oil. Spent the
better part of yesterday and most of today, and finally have everything
fixed.

Both machines are running Vista, by the way. The "trick" to fix the
Windows Update bug was to re-install the O/S using the "Upgrade" option.
Unfortunately, that fix broke the audio. I found the MS KB that addressed
it, and apparently it had to do with the fact the SigmaTel uses .ini files
instead of .inf files, which causes problems when you update. The KB did
not offer a solution other that "ask your OEM for help" (mostly because
SigmaTel doesn't even support their own products, they write them for
OEM's.

Persistent googling produced a major clue, however.

Apparently to "uninstall" a device driver, one should NOT use the device
manager (as one would think) but instead use add/remove programs.

That FINALLY did the trick. That and then re-installing their latest
driver.

Now everything is finally working... the Windows Update, the Windows Live
OneCare firewall (after running their firewall repair) and now the audio
as well, whew.




Thanks for the update. Nice work (a considerable amount of it, too).


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: sound devices
    ... Remove them from the Device Manager and let Windows find the drivers. ... sound and audio devices then select audio codecs properties and all the ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Inspiron 1501 Headaches
    ... to the device manager says it's installed and "working properly." ... tried everything I can think of, including installing the drivers from the ... I was also having firewall problems with Windows Live OneCare but finally ... the Windows Update, the Windows Live ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: No audio device
    ... working on getting the machine connected to Windows Update site. ... To verify that Windows is configured to use the audio features of your ... Double-click Sound, video, and game controllers. ... Click OK until you return to Device Manager. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: no sound
    ... Try this, open device manager again. ... Audio on it, and select remove, now reboot. ... should reinstall the drivers for them. ... > Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Yellow ? in Device Manager causing videos to freeze
    ... My Audigy 4 soundcard appears in Device Manager as working with no problems, ... I have a yellow question mark over Other devices>Multimedia Audio ... what is the yellow question mark in Device Manager ... You need to update the device drivers for the sound card. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
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