Old motherboard drivers

Sounds like the HDD wasn't formatted properly???, maybe the format stopped??? and retained all the info on your settings.
Did you fdisk first??

I must agree, this does seem impossible, considering i do not have an onboard sound card. The drivers are even the exact same ones, and since they are onboard drivers, i can not uninstall them. And yes i think i did fdisk the hard drive but as i have said, i have formatted and repartitioned a few times since, everytime successfully. I must point something out though, when i put in a different hard drive that already had windows xp on it, it STILL picked up the onboard sound card drivers.

If the drivers show up after using two different hard drives, one of which was from a different computer, then it means those drivers came on the motherboard.  The other two are correct when they say it's impossible for the data to have migrated unless you formatted improperly.  Odds are those drivers are supposed to be there.  Both motherboards are asus and therefore the company probably puts the same drivers on their brand of motherboards.

On a side note, is there any detrimental effect to leaving the drivers there?  It may be safer to let them stay where they are, if the drivers did come from the Intel motherboard.

If I could have the model of the board that may also help to clear things up.

If you are not sure then try aida32 which will search your systems hardware here is a link.
http://www.webattack.com/get/aida32.shtml

Let us know,

ypjoe

Ah, aida32.  That's pure genious.....I use that to find my specs all the time.  I agree totally with ypjoe777 that you should use that program.  It'll provide you with all the information you will ever need until the end of time.  That in conjunction with a list of the drivers found on your model motherboard will clear up any confusion.

Sounds like Asus left the sound chip on the motherboard but forgot to completely disable the sound feature.

Ok, the asus board's model number is p2-99b. now i can guarentee you that the motherboard does not have any sort of sound card, let alone need sound card drivers. The reason why i want them removed is because they were not there before and i believe it is making my computer unstable.

You are correct in that the p2-99b does not have onboard sound. I know that the board has a creative SB-Link for compatiblity with SB16; here is a link
http://www.motherboards.org/manuals/p/ASUS-P2-99B/490.htmlI

Under which sublink are finding the driver listed and what is the exact name of the driver?

Also chances are very slim that this driver is causing instability issues.  What is the computer doing?
Stability issues are usually a sign of bad hardware or hardware configuration.

If you really think this is a the stabilty and you can't unistall the driver by using the device manager or by going into the bios and disabling it then I believe you are stuck with it.

In my humble opinion I think that you should leave the drivers there because there is no way physically possible that it is the same driver from the old motherboard and for that matter I really doubt it is the cause any stability problems.  It is apparently related to the board some how.  


Good luck,

ypjoe

The drivers fall under "Sound, video and game controllers" (usually where your sound card drivers go?) and the drivers are; "Audio Codecs", "Legacy Audio Drivers", "Legacy Video Capture Devices", "Media Control Devices", and finally "Video Codecs. Now i have double checked and yes, the Asus Althlon motherbaord has the EXACT same audio drivers........

The stability problem i had was, when I did anything, such as install something, my computer would bring up a BSOD, then the hard drive would be corrupt, i checked in Partition Magic and it said UNMOUNTABLE hard drive or something like that.

Are you installing Windows XP from scratch?
If not, then this is your problem.

>I must point something out though, when i put in a different hard drive that already had windows xp on it, it STILL picked up >the onboard sound card drivers.
If you took the drive from another PC and hooked it up to this one it will detect any new hardware automatically. Its supposed to do that.

Fdisk your HDD again, re-partition, re-format.
Then Install Windows from scratch. Boot from CD-ROM.
Then let Windows XP re-format your HDD again in NTFS.

Try that and see how it goes.

Cheers
Rodger

Dude, im not a dumbass, ive already done that, a few times...... I always reinstall from scratch. I know its not my hard drive, the information has to be located somewhere else, and so my system thinks it has an onboard sound card and i do not know why.

>Dude, im not a dumbass, ive already done that, a few times...... I always reinstall from scratch. I know its not my hard >drive, the information has to be located somewhere else, and so my system thinks it has an onboard sound card and i do >not know why.

The information can't be located anywhere else other than your HDD.
I think it is your HDD which is why I suggested you try reformatting again.
Did you do exactly as I suggested? Fdisk, Partition, Format. Then Format again in XP using NTFS?
I know a lot of people take "Short-cuts" to speed things up, but they end up doing it wrong.

If you Think about it the only thing you kept when you changed motherboards was your HDD, CD-ROM and RAM.
Data can't be kept on the CD-ROM or RAM obviously so that leaves the HDD.
If you've formatted and fdisked as you say, then there is no way it should be doing this.
So we must assume your HDD is not being formatted properly or is FAULTY.
Have you tried a different HDD? A blank one Preferably, definitely not one Already loaded with XP.
Even better would be a new one.

Once again, I agree with the others.  Take it from someone who has tried "shortcuts" because it makes no sense to do something you "know" doesn't work.

Just do it anyway.  You'd be surprised how many hardware errors are fixed by repeating the same "wash, rinse, repeat" type actions.  On my current computer, I had to format my slave drive twice to properly remove its old Windows 98, not to mention make it NTFS.  Some things just need to be redone, regardless of whether it's been done before or not.

If you are using XP Professional, try running SYSPREP with the switches -PNP and -NOSIDGEN on your machine. SYSPREP cn be installed from DEPLOY.CAB on the CD, and I think you can also download it.

What this will do is reboot your machine, retaining the software, but forcing a COMPLETE re-scan of all the hardware in your system after the next reboot.

If windows repeatedly finds this hardware even after you have deleted it from Device Manager then your board needs the drivers.  

They may not be for your sound card but for the "CREATIVE SB-LINK" that is built in to the motherboard.  They may be generic drivers that window always loads also(they will not cause stability issues). In my opnion I really think that you are shooting in the wrong direction.

I personally  have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe board with the nForce2 SoundStorm card built in and not only do I have the SoundStorm drivers in device manager but I have the same drivers that you have listed.  I bet that if EVERYONE that is replying to this question checked we would find that they most or all have these installed especially if they have the OS.

So now that you have tried another HD with XP on it did you still get the BSOD after installing software?  One other thing to note is that I'm suprised the HD was recognized at all when you switched from one system to the other(Unless they share the exact same motherboard) You almost always have to completely reformat a drive when there is a major hardware change such as a motherboard to keep from probable stability issues.  

What was the code given from the BSOD?

Good luck,

ypjoe

OMG, they ARE NOT supposed to be there, there werent there before! Until i switched the damn motherbaords, and they are not generic! They are for a legacy audio card, and even then i cannot use my sound card when i install it, and i had used it in the passed when those stupid legacy drivers weren't there! How many times must i say, those drivers should not be there, i have formatted over 4 times and there are still there, stop telling it SHOULD be like that when u dont even own the baord, let alone know what device manager should look like when u have it installed.

The BSOD said UNMOUNTABLE boot volume or something, now it was perfect before the computer crashed, i checked with partition magic.

TaintedGod~

I am sorry that you are taking offense to our comments but I must stress the fact that we are only trying to help you.  If you disagree with one of us that is fine, but I find that at least two of responses seem rude and are probably borderline "flaming".  
I know that your computer issue is not imaginary and that you are probably pulling your hair out over it because it doesn't seem to make any sense or to be possible.  Unfortunately though you have been stricken by this issue.
No one here feels like you are a "dumb***" but we are trying to fully understand you problem and to do that requires for us to be sure that you have tried all avenues that we can up with and to answer any of our questions to better serve you.  

If you are annoyed with our questions or comments you may consider being more thorough in your questions and comments to help inform us of the everything you are experiencing, i.e. other sound cards dont work and you are trying to solve a stabilty issue invovling the BSOD.

It doesnt seem to me that the drivers are being saved after Fdisking and reformatting the drive but rather that XP is finding somekind of hardware, correctly or incorrectly, possible having to do the SB-Link header?(Which is the only sound-related option on the board)

The Legacy Audio Drivers are very(Not completely) universal even though legacy is also a brand of Soundcard.

One more thing...according to the link to the manual:
http://www.motherboards.org/manuals/p/ASUS-P2-99B/490.htmlI
The SB-LINK connector is just under the top PCI slot and according to the manual if you have a Sound Blaster compatible soundcard it has to be connected to this header in order to decrease stability issues.(pg.35)
Also there are options in the BIOS to enable PnP(Plug n Play) devices or to manually assign IRQs.  You might double check these.

This will be my last comment and I hope you will eventually find the answer you are looking for,
ypjoe
 

just for the record:  i've had fresh installs of windows xp and if it detects a modem it will sometimes install those generic drivers as well.  just so you know :)

I noticed you said you flashed the BIOS.  Any chance there is a newer flash out there now?  Reason I ask is, maybe the flash you used contained a misguided bit of info that makes the MOBO think it has sound when it really don't.  ASUS may be using a somewaht generic flash that can work on multiple boards.  In any event, you can boot into BIOS and see if there is an option to disable onboard sound (even though it aint really there).  If this option exists, use it, then uninstall from device manager again and they should not get re-detected, since the firmware signatures won't be generated on the next boot.

3v1lj1m, the difference is, i do not have a sound card installed, and those drivers had never been there before.


johndeerb, i flashed the bios after i had tried formatting several times, the bios is infact a newer version but that did not fix the problem. I will try putting back the older version and i might even try the oldest bios available.

You might also want to get the latest chipset drivers from the MOBO manufacturer, just to make sure the microcode signatures are all getting recognized correctly by windows.

I agree completely with ypjoe's Last comment..

Have you tried a new HDD yet??? It doesn't look like you have (by your comments)
The simplest solutions are often the right answer.
I would say you've probably corrupted this HDD by using Partition Magic which is notorious for screwing up HDD's.
The Unmountable errors you are getting further point to the HDD and just because you've used Partition Magic to "Check" the HDD means nothing. Its likely as I've already mentioned that Partition Magic has screwed your drive, so of course when you use Partition Magic to check the drive it will find no fault....

Use a New HDD!!

it doesn't need a soundcard to install those drivers.  do you have a modem?

Like ypjoe77 says, if you've deleted the devices and then windows picks them up as new hardware on reboot they are being found on the mobo.

Windows uses plug-n-play whereby all connections are tested and device found send a hardware code to windows so they can be identified and the drivers installed automatically.

If this is not the case the perhaps you have an OEM version of MS Windows that installs the drivers. If you still think that the information is from your disk somehow. Download Ontrack or one of the disk drive manufacturers disk utilities (eg fujitsu I think use an ontrack based disk util). You can then zero out the entire drive and start from scratch with your installation media.

Another option is to go into the bios (ctrl or del on boot usually) and disable any on board components and possibly turn off the plug and play options too.

HTH

If the drivers are possibly being loaded from the hard drive, as some people suspect. Then when the drive is completely wiped of ALL partitions, do a "fdisk /mbr". This will ensure that the Master Boot Record is gone. Then run something like Killdisk, a disk wiping utility. This will ensure that there are no bits left on the drive.

If you are sure that the drive were correctly fdisked and formatted, and the drivers continue to load, then the problem is with the motherboard. As others have said, Windows is detecting a plug and play sound device somewhere.

As pbhj asked, what version of windows are you loading? Is it and OEM, retail, or a branded CD (Dell, HP, Compaq), or hacked?

Ok, i know for sure it isnt the hard drive, besides the fact its relatively new, i switched to fat32 from ntfs, which means any data that could of been left behind would be considered corrupt by fat32, yet still the drivers were there, and i must point out, the driver can NOT be removed or even disabled, device manager wont let me. :/   Then i tried installing windows 98, and guess what ?! The drivers were not there, but there is no way in hell that i will continue to use windows 98. I do have a modem but i have installed without it and the drivers are still there once again. Even when i upgraded windows 98 to xp, the drivers returned. I will try out disabling the pnp stuff and even the onboard stuff, mind you i looked in the bios and there wasnt a thing about a sound card, just like there shouldnt be. I am using winxp integrated with SP1, illegal copy, though i have tried other xp disks and it did not fix it.

am i the only person here that has seen these generic drivers in every xp installation?  i'm just curious

Hmm, I should have read all the posts

" The drivers fall under "Sound, video and game controllers" (usually where your sound card drivers go?) and the drivers are; "Audio Codecs", "Legacy Audio Drivers", "Legacy Video Capture Devices", "Media Control Devices", and finally "Video Codecs. Now i have double checked and yes, the Asus Althlon motherbaord has the EXACT same audio drivers........ "

Think you've got it there Jim

Yes, ok, they are generic driver for an AUDIO CARD, I do not have an audio card! Even when I install with just a video card, they are still there! You are all saying they should be there, tell me how that makes sence when I have nothing installed that could possibley need audio drivers. When i try to install a sound card, it does not work, I have used this sound card in the past, it worked great. Those drivers were never there before, tell me how or why they are there now. No one has explained this to me, all that has been said is they should be there, well guess what, they shouldnt be. I even mentioned above, when I used win98 there was nothing in device manager about audio devices.

Okay, for the sake of everyone trying to help you, I'm gonna lay out all the possibilities right here:

1.  Your hard drive is retaining the information of your last config. for some unknown reason.
2.  Your motherboard is incorrectly detecting said audio device.
     ~The drivers are then loading because they come on XP.  Thus, if they did not exist on 98, they
        would not automatically install.
3.  Another device installed on the motherboard is causing said audio driver to be installed.  Have
     you tried using only the motherboard with a completely different set of everything?
4.  The drivers keep installing regardless because something is up with your motherboard.
5.  A deity hates you.

As it stands, the first four are the only rational reasons that said audio driver keeps appearing.  I mean, those are the ONLY rational ones.  Now you say you have formatted the HD, changed it from NTFS to FAT32, and so on.  Thus we can rule out situation 1.  Situation 2 has a low possibility, but still can happen.  Situations 3 and 4 are the most likely, 4 being moreso.  In the case of situation 4, you should just flash your BIOS with the most recent version.  It ought to clear out whatever oddities are existing within the settings.  With regards to situation 3, if you have tried a differend HD and kept out the modem, that problem should be ruled out.

Keep in mind this is all assuming you never installed this audio card on the motherboard.  If you did at any point, that may in itself be the problem and would definately lead me to believe situation 4 is the issue.  Otherwise, good luck.  Once you can isolate the problem's source (which I cannot do from here), come back and let us know.  Then we can get this problem fixed.  Dont' worry; we all know what it's like.  I've got a video problem right now that no solution asofar has fixed.  Things happen; that's why Experts-Exchange exists.

Best of luck.

Oh, and if the problem happens to land in Situation #5, you're on your own.

Its look like it is number 4 or 5 because i already tried flashing the bios with the latest and the oldest from asus.com. I have never seen these drivers before and never had a card on that board that needed such drivers. I guess that leaves me with number 4, somehow my MOBO has been screwed. Is there anyway i could test to board for fualts of some sort? Besides getting out a circuit tester, maybe some software?

Thanks.

these are generic drivers that windows installs whether you have a sound card or not. it doesn't care if you have a sound card.  that's why it says "legacy" in the driver name. these are simply installed for generic compatibility.  if it was installing an actual driver it would list the device name.  this is normal. it has nothing to do with your actual card. besides, once you've fdisk'd and formatted there is no way for it to bring any of your old stuff back.  even defragmenting your HD makes deleted items vanish forever (i discovered that when i accidentally deleted some hard to find videos and defragged.  i went to get them back with undelete and they were completely gone).

i'm outta change.
:(

Ok, Then could you explain why these drivers just started to show up, as i have said this before, they were not there in the past, what could make them just appear now?

i couldn't say but i've had boards with nothing but video and still had those drivers.  i want to say it's for multimedia compatibility.  

Audio Codecs - codec is a compressor/decompressor - windows needs this to be able to understand mp3's nd such. you won't necessarily be able to hear them but it understands them.

Legacy Audio Drivers - this is the only one that actually mentions drivers and the "Legacy" in front of it means it's more of a "hey if i see one i'll be able to use it" kinda thing.

Legacy Video Capture Devices - nothing to do with audio

Media Control Devices - nothing to do with audio

Video Codecs - nothing to do with audio



in the hole

Well you arent posting anythign usefull, you say that should be there, but why, they have never been there before, why the need for them now, the only thing that i have heard that makes sence is that something could be damaged.

I wouldnt have a problem with these "drivers/codecs" if they werent screwin things up. I have a working sound card that i know works, but ever since those "drivers/codecs" are there, i can not get it to work, it says i dont have any drivers for it, meanwhile i just installed them and restarted.

good luck

What service packs and hotfixes are installed?

>Well you arent posting anythign usefull

3v1lj1m and other Experts.
I suggest we just ignore this question now and let TaintedGit work out the problem for himself.
He obviously knows more than us, so I fail to see why he even asked for our help in the first place.

I asked because i thought someone out there might know more than myself, i have tried everything said, most of them before i even came here, i even tried some of my own methods, but nothing worked, and none of you can explain why these drivers/codecs are now in my device manager.

I have integrated service pack 1 but i have used other xp cds without it and they were still there, if you are thinking i need some hotfixes or something, that wouldn't make sence because i have not needed them in the past since no new hardware was installed that could be causing this.

I notice you STILL haven't tried another HDD...........

It's fairly simple: like I said, use SYSPREP. This will kill off ALL drivers, and the machine will only re-load the drivers according to what the HARDWARE ITSELF says needs to be installed.

If, after that, these drivers STILL load, then your motherboard needs those drivers; in which case you will simply have to look to see if those drivers have been updated.

I used SYSREP, but your explaination doesnt make sence that i would need those drivers since i have not needed them in the past and they will not allow me to install a sound card! There is one thing i might try, declocking....

that has absolutely nothing at all to do with any of this.

"that has absolutely nothing at all to do with any of this."

What the hell are u talking about, it has everything to do with it, the motherboard is obviously the problem since i have checked many times, and i know it is not software. There is a good chance it could be the overclocking since we all know that overclocking can make a system unstable and so far, I have not received an explanation for this odd problem, stop posting unless comments (I am only referring to 3v1lj1m).

you sir are extremely rude...

TaintedGod,

I think everyone's getting a little too frustrated on this.

Back to basics: Plug n Play works roughly like this:

The system asks EVERY hardware device on the system to describe itself, and allocates resources (IRQs, DMA etc) as appropriate. If your system thinks there's a SB16 sound card on its mobo, that's because there's a device responding to its query to that effect.

The odds therefore on a *nonexistent* device responding to a PNP interrogation, are NIL. BIOS and XP Plug n Play deals ONLY with responses from hardware.

On top of that, if you run SYSPREP because that tells Windows to REMOVE all references to almost all PNP devices and re-scan for ALL PNP devices after the reboot. This effectively tells XP that it knows NOTHING about the hardware on your PC, so it certainly won't assume you have a certain sound card.

LEGACY devices are NOT PNP devices, they are software options purely existing to provide compatibility (so, for example, DOS games can be conned into thinking you have a SB16 card when you don't).

In Device Manager if you choose "View devices by connection" you will see the legacy devices appear OUTSIDE the "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" folder, but if you drill down into that folder , find and then open the PCI bus, you will see the PNP drivers the sound card actually needs to function.

For example, I'm using a Dell Optiplex GX240 here; PNP detects a SOUNDMAX integrated sound card on the PCI bus, The legacy drivers include codecs and other such gubbins.

So, if you can be specific about which drivers - PNP and legacy - are being installed, maybe we can work out how (if it's at all appropriate) to disable the legacy ones.

OOff topic, slightly, but: The PCI bus shouldn't be affected by overclocking, that said overclocking is really not worth the effort- and that's based on the fact I worked for a semiconductor company a few years ago and found out how overclocking is possible.

Intel chips can be overclocked because they are manufactured to run at a given speed, fail the QA at that speed, and get downclocked until a point is reached where they DO pass the QA.

The imperfections in the chip are still there, only running the chip at a lower speed tends to reduce the likelihood of you actually noticing them.

Other semiconductor manufacturers - Fujitsu and AMD spring to mind - make chips to run at a set speed, and their chips are only sold *at that speed* if the chips can be QA-assured.

Just an honest opinion but overclocking - even with good cooling systems - introduces a whole spectrum of PLAUSIBLE failures, ranging from odd software blips to a full-blown CPU meltdown. If Intel aren't prepared to sell a chip at the speed it was made to run at, then you have to ask yourself if it's really worth your while to risk the stability of your system for a few dozen extra 3dmarks or a couple of extra FPS on your games.

(I find you get much better results changing the task priority of your game while it's running to "High", than from overclocking the CPU, and this won't fry your system).

I finally found out what the problem was myself, I had lowered the multiplier and forgot to raise it, now you are probably wondering how that could of fixed it, well after setting that back and with a fresh installation, i installed the sound card and it worked great, even though those drivers/codecs are still there, and now i no longer get BSOD's. It still doesn't explain why my system is now using those drivers/codecs but now that it works, I dont care.
Thanks for all the replies, this was one dumb mistake on my part. :/

that's where the problem came in.  we thought this question was about the old drivers and not a stability issue.  oh well, i guess miscommunication happens sometimes :)
go to the community forum and ask that the question be closed and your points refunded.