AC97 Failure

KiwiMutant · December 2011

Hi, I just got two Dell GX 280 small form factor desktops. Identical machines same mobo, chip etc. The only difference is one has a 40gig HDD the other an 80gig. Both cleaned HD. I respectively deleted the partitions making them raw. And formatted (NTFS). I installed XP SP3 and went to Dell site, entered respective service tags and got all drivers. The 40gig machine accepted all driver installations no probs. The 80gig All but the realtek AC97. About 70% of way through installation the system switches off and reboots. Then I get 'found new hardware' (audio controller AC97). If I allow to install and search microsoft it finds the drivers and during installation crashes and reboots again. I tried using Driver Doctor to get drivers. Same result. Have uninstalled device and rebooted. Still fails. Have checked in Bios at boot and onboard audio controller is enabled. Swapped hard drives thinking if I put 80gig in the other machine I might be able to install the drivers and swap it back. All was well until I tried to install AC97 drivers. The machine just stopped. Now nothing happens when I press the power button. Nothing. The power light on the mobo is on so is getting power. Anyway, put the 80 back in the other machine and all is fine but still no AC97. Is poss I guess that I didn't install bios update first, or something. I'll try wiping the drive and starting again. If anyone has had a similar issue and resolved it, I'd love to hear from you.:tongue2:

KiwiMutant · December 2011

Problem solved. When I got the original drivers from Dell I used another computer (as I didn't have the ethernet drivers yet). I just went back to dell and using the sevice tag I let them anylize the system. This gave me a Bios update and then a chipset. I then got the audio drivers which turned out to be Soundman not Realtek. They installed and are working fine. I assumed that progs like Device Doctor and even Windows Installer actually detected the device and got the appropriate drivers. Apparently not.

Hatop · December 2011

Well, it sounds like the bios update fixed the ID tag for the sound hardware. You can identify hardware based on its pci-id(this works across all major interconnect types). However, if the id reported matches the wrong manufacturer then it will detect the wrong hardware. This is very easy to see on linux machines with the command

sud lspci -v

Here is an example output from my work computer

ixela@ubuntu:~$ lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 0a)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 0a) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
	Memory behind bridge: dfc00000-dfcfffff
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0a) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42
	Memory at dfe00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	I/O ports at ecd8 [size=8]
	Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Memory at dff00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0a)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Memory at dfe80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
	Memory at dfdfc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
	I/O behind bridge: 00001000-00001fff
	Memory behind bridge: dfb00000-dfbfffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000080100000-00000000802fffff
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
	I/O ports at ff80 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
	I/O ports at ff60 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
	I/O ports at ff40 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23
	I/O ports at ff20 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
	Memory at ff980800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=32
	Capabilities: <access denied>

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel modules: leds-ss4200, iTCO_wdt, intel-rng

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
	I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8]
	I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1]
	I/O ports at 0170 [size=8]
	I/O ports at 0374 [size=1]
	I/O ports at ffa0 [size=16]
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA IDE Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 20
	I/O ports at fe00 [size=8]
	I/O ports at fe10 [size=4]
	I/O ports at fe20 [size=8]
	I/O ports at fe30 [size=4]
	I/O ports at fec0 [size=16]
	Memory at 80000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: ata_piix

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5
	I/O ports at ece0 [size=32]
	Kernel modules: i2c-i801

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0220
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
	Memory at dfbf0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Expansion ROM at <ignored> [disabled]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: tg3
	Kernel modules: tg3

This shows that the identifying information is supplied by Dell and if they'd reported it wrong through the subsystem then the entire computer would misidentify it. Hence, your BIOS update and then the fixed driver.

AC97 Failure

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