I have accessed my 'motherboard's site' (ASUS). There appears to be a whole range of sound driver updates 'n stuff.
A couple of questions for you experts.
1. Should you do the updates in date order? ie oldest first working up to the new ones or doesn't it matter?
2. Should I do a system restore point before each one just in case?
I must confess to being a tad worried over re-installation and updates to the motherboard.
Oooooer mother!

Bolshi, there isnt a standard and they can be hard to work out which one does what.

If you cant be sure which is shich do not update the drivers unless you have a good reason to do so.

bolshi, you just need the latest in each category. As Spaceman says, it's probably safer to stick to just the sound drivers if that's where your problem is. If you have problems identifying it post up your motherboard model no.

Thanks lads. I have downloaded Asus's software wizard which has looked at my PC which has (supposedly) just brought up the relevant updates.
My motherboard is K8V (deluxe Athlon 64 mainboard) 800FSB, Dual Lan, Ieee 1394, Sata.
I must confess to feeling confused over some of the audio updates offered.

Bolshi

You are not alone in your confusion - but at least we all have Kayak. :-)

Rule 1. The only daft questions are the ones that never get asked.
Rule 2. When a computer asks a user a question it has multiple interpretations and is never pertinent to the problem being experienced.

OK, discount the beta drivers and the ones for 64-bit systems (yours will be 32-bit) and it looks like this is the one you want:

5.12.01.3663

OS Win98SE / WinME / Win2K / WinXP

Description SoundMAX Audio Driver version 5.12.01.3663 WHQL driver for Windows 98SE,ME,2000,XP


I looked up K8V by the way, but there are several variants with additional letters after the code. I'm assuming you got the model number printed on the motherboard in which case it will be that one.

Take a system restore point before updating.

As an IT person I spend lots of my time updating drivers in my PC's when there isnt really a good reason to do so, I also always upgrade my BIOS's when there is a new version and I generally tinker most days. However the downside of this is that I often have interesting problems to deal with on my machines. I dont mind this and I can sort them out but some of the problems caused by bad drivers and particularly with bad BIOS flashes can bring your machine to a standstill.

A bad BIOS flash on many PCs is very very hard to resolve, I am happy to do hot BIOS switches (prizing out a BIOS chip after the PC has booted and changing it) but I would not recommend it to anyone else!

Moral of the story, as someone who helps out not technical PC users I often find that their problems goes back to a driver updates, and often they only upgraded the driver because it was newer than the on they had. But these updates often only have very minor bug fixes. So now I recommend that you dont upgrade them unless you have a good reason to do so, for example something isnt working. Some machines have good wizards that know your PC and know where to get updates, I would not worry about them, its the ones where they say go to a website and download it without giving any indication of what you should download and why that worry me.

Just my view, feel free to ignore.

Kayak. Many thanks.

Spaceman. I would never ignore anyone with more knowledge than me (apart from shares where I am a right prat!).

Thinking cap time ...... ! For 50 I could buy a sound card. Though even with a new sound card I've got to tinker with the Bios which is (yet another) an area I always steer away from.

Time to take a break methinks.

Bolshi, that sort of tinkering is fairly OK just write down what setting you cahnged and what they were before you changed them, do you need another sound card?

Spaceman. M original problem was 5.1 surround syatem only working on the 2 front speakers. My sound is onboard, hence the questions about motherboard updates.

Sorry Bolshi, I had forgotten the original !

Bolshi, if your sound doesn't work I don't think you're going to do any harm by reloading the sound drivers. The ones that are more dangerous are the basic ones like the BIOS and disk drivers etc. where if you mess it up you may not end up with a bootable system.

Kayak & Spaceman. Thanks for all help & support. I have a couple of critical trades on the go today & tomorrow so I'll leave it until Saturday I reckon. Will keep you informed of progress.
Thanks again.

Hi all--not much good with computers but have a really annoying problem I'd like some advice on. I am on BT broadband 1.1m and keep losing connection while working online--I have the dial up notice appearing constantly and sometimes says unable to establish a connection or unable to connect to remote computer, this is while I have been using it. I sometimes just have to leave it an hour or so and try later. I am on a country exchange and wondered if it is just unable to cope with too much loading it cannot offer 2m yet. Having moaned at my husband to get windows xp and a better computer--I'm hacked off to still have the problem !!

moneyplus, what sort of modem do you use for the connection? is it a usb device that came with the broadband?

It shoudl not keep disconnecting this could mean there is a problem with the ADSL signal on your phone line, but it shoudl not have been installed if the line loss was to high. Have you asked BT to check the line?

Do you have filters plugged in on the socket where the BB is? do you notice crackle on your phone line when you are on the phone?

moneyplus, it sounds like it's just that the ADSL signal is not strong enough or of good enough quality to run reliably at 1Mbps (in which case you can forget 2Mbps). If you are some distance from the exchange or have a dodgy line it is quite possible.

If you have a modem or router with lights then when you get the problem you are likely to be seeing a flashing code which means 'loss of sync' when looked up in the manual.

There are a few things you can try though. Try disconnecting all of the phones in the house and plugging your ADSL modem into the master socket (where the outside telephone wire first comes in).

I appreciate that you wouldn't want to live like that for any length of time but if it is a marginal problem, i.e. it works OK once you've done that, you can start seeing if it is one particular telephone that messes things up, you can run a permanent wire directly to the master socket rather than the closest one to your computer, and you can also buy good quality ADSL filters and splitters which again may make a difference.

If it turns out to be unreliable at the master socket with all phones disconnected then you can try reporting a fault to your ISP but in the end sadly the answer is likely to be to put you back down to 512Kb.

Kayak - I wonder if you could help me, since yesterday I can't log on to Moneyam through IE6 - but I can with firefox. I get to the login screen and it just throws me back there every time when I click the login button. Have called Moneyam tech support - very helpful but no solution. I can use Firefox but it seems to upset GNI charts for some reason. I have deleted all cookies and offline content, run window washer and have spysweeper running in the back ground. Also run adaware 7. I have Norton AV 2003 - all of these show nothing. I can log onto any site except Moneyam! XP Pro O/S. I'm stuck!

Don't really know what to suggest, CS, apart from checking you have the right password in the right upper/lower case, checking that if you're going in via a link, it's a http: link and not https:, and checking that you're not blocking cookies. If you're blocking cookies you will see a little red no entry sign in the bottom right hand corner of the window.

thanks very much spaceman and kayak will check out your suggestions-very helpful.

Kayak - thanks for the reply, I couldn't post last night as the site was down. I've had another go and run adawareSE personal which found 6 "critical" objects - to my surprise deleting these has removed the problem. Unfortunately I don't know which one it was but it must be amongst these 6:
obj[18]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@clickbank.net/
obj[19]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@statse.webtrendslive.com/
obj[20]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@questionmarket.com/
obj[21]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@2o7.net/
obj[22]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@atdmt.com/
obj[23]=IECache Entry : Cookie:richard@tradedoubler.com/

Anyway it's not bugging the life out of me anymore and incidentally spysweeper said the machine was clean before AdawareSE personal found it.
Thanks CS