# Unknown Device (yellow !)



## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

Hi everyone,

I have an audigy 2 zs sound card and after reinstalling xp i havent been able to recover my sound. I have tried reinstalling drivers (from cd and from creative.com), uninstalling the card and installing it again, taking out the card and putting it back in, spent over 5 hours searching forums and threads.

I belive the problem is that under my Sound, Video and Game controllers in device manager there is a listing named Unknown Device ( yellow ! ), this appears when the card is plugged in. I do not know what to do anymore and i would extremely appreciate any help you guys can offer. 

When i go to sound properties from control panel, it says "No Audio Device", when i try running any creative software ( Creative Speaker Settings, Calibrator...etc) i get an error stating "The audio device supported by this application is not detected". 

I have totally run out of ideas and would hate to reinstall xp, so if you guys can give me some advice, it would be much appreciated.

Thx


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

First of all, does your motherboard has Onboard Audio that remained enabled in the BIOS settings? If yes, you'll need first to Disable it.


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

Hi zazula,

thx for your reply

yes it is disabled as i thought it would be contributing to the problem. that doesnt seem to be it either.

PS - i installed a vista beta os and the sound on it is fine. (i reinstalled xp after vista, nd had to edit a few things in command prompt to get back the vista boot manager, as i was no longer able to boot vista after installing xp) dont think that is a problem though.

plz reply

thx


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

1. Yes, Vista may have something to do with this issue. Read this (it's three pages in total) - you'll see the existing WinXP drivers may have been overwritten: http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vista&message.id=622&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

2. Read through the following article, including the linked pages at its end:
How to troubleshoot unknown devices that are listed in Device Manager in Windows XP


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

Hi zazula,

thx again for your reply, i will check out the links


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

zazula,

after looking at the links i dont think the problem is there. my two os's are installed on seperate partitions and i DO have sound on vista but not on xp. is there any thing else i can do?

thx for ur help


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

When you followed through the Microsoft article in #2 above, you ended up with no results?


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

hey zazula,

thx for replying but sadly i got nothing from there. its main focus is finding wut is causing the problem, which i do kno is the sound card. 

thx for your help


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

Please Run *msinfo32*, expand *Components*, and then double-click *Problem Devices*. Post back whatever you see there.


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

ok will do

thx


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

Not Available	SW\{CD171DE3-69E5-11D2-B56D-0000F8754380}\{9B365890-165F-11D0-A195-0020AFD156E4}	The drivers for this device are not installed.

tht is wut i c there

thx once again


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

also, i tried reinstalling the drivers again and i notice near the end of the installation there was an error message that read "Invalid Handler". but the installation continues and says it is successful


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

The problematic device in your post #11 is the WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver. "SW" means it's a software-enumerated device. Open your Windows folder and look for the following: *wdmaud.sys* in System32\drivers and *wdmaud.drv* in System32, and post back.


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## Tech_Geek11 (Aug 16, 2005)

hi zazula, 

due to an ethernet controller problem i had to reformat my xp which managed to fix the sound problem. however i have another problem now. 

here is more details from a new thread that i created.

i recently removed my sound card and put it back in as i was trying to fix a sound problem. When i booted into safe mode it said Ethernet COntroller not recognized or sumthing like that. I reinstalled my XP and the problem was still there. When i put my mobo cd in, it doesnt recognize the presence of the Ethernet Controller. I think something is wrong with the hardware itself and im not sure what to do.

plz help, thank you

PS - It says it is a driver problem but i doubt its that, as the cd doesnt gimme the option to install the driver. (always has b4)


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