Windows 7: Windows detects speakers that aren't plugged in?

Not trying to be condescending. Did you by chance disconnect the HD front panel audio connector from the board? did you try the 3.5mm plugs on the board and the audio card. Also re-enable the onboard audio.

I have pulled my hair out in the past getting audio to work and just offering what I tried or found.

This tower doesn't have any front panel audio connectors, and there are no alternative 3.5mm jacks anywhere but coming out the I/O panel and the sound card. I'm wondering if popping out the CMOS battery for a few minutes would help, but I'm not very hopeful.

Well, at this point I can see no reason why not. If you have a new one slap it in.

Be sure to power off and pull the main power cable from the machine. You may have a jumper on the board labeled CLR RTC or CLR CMOS which you would move to the adjacent pins for 5 seconds to reset CMOS too.

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System specs should be uploaded now. CMOS reseat didn't do anything, also reseated my video card and all power connectors while I was in there, still no response from the onboard 3.5mm

Should have mentioned, the AMD HDMI sound device is off the video card and I've tried the onboard audio with that device both disabled and enabled with no change.

Just noticed another clue. If I completely uninstall the onboard RealTek drivers, then plug in speakers to the 3.5mm out jack, the Playback device tab in Sound shows the Speakers device flickering on and off several times per second. No amount of jiggling around the jack changes the flickering.

Sounds like a hardware failure to me. If it was software I would expect it to work in another OS and on a clean install. Disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS would normally let you use an add-in sound card. My guess is the onboard sound has failed, and its so messed up it won't disable. Open up your case and just make sure a screw or something similar didn't get dropped inside or jammed up under the motherboard. Anything else weird happening? Sometimes a bad or failing power supply can cause weird things to happen.

No other anomalous behaviors beyond the audio.

I checked out the manufacturer's diagram for the ASRock 970 Extreme3 and just as I suspected the audio codec chip is directly next to the PCIe x1 slot where I plugged in the USB 3.0 expansion card a few days ago.

Now I'm just trying to figure out if it was more likely I hit it with ESD when installing or if somehow the card (by virtue of it's horrible design) somehow corrupted the chip merely by its proximity. The first seems more plausible, but generally I'm not touching the motherboard at all when I insert cards, unless they have a lock mechanism which the PCIe x1 slot doesn't have. If the latter seems completely implausible I'll have to own full culpability and can't blame the crappy card.

Is there any chance I can damage further or even perhaps desolder the chip to eliminate the chips interference with other sound cards? Anything at all I could possibly do to get BIOS to actually disengage the chip entirely?

The audio chip could have been cracked and wouldn't be visible without magnification..maybe. I'd advise against trying to de-solder it too, it may have 20 or so connections in the embedded conductors in the PCB and would damage something else.

I think that board has a removable BIOS chip. You might give ASrock a call to see what they might suggest. 1-909-590-8308

Email: support@asrockamerica.com


Support: HTPC, Home Theatre PC Manufacturer & Supplier - ASRock Inc.

Depending on where the standoffs are it might have just been board flex when inserting the other card that damaged something. Whatever happened I don't think it's repairable. Unless you find a screw or something else where its not supposed to be there isn't much you can do. The Bios just sends a signal to the audio chip telling it to turn off. If the audio chip is broken and won't turn off, replacing the BIOS chip won't make any difference. You could try one last ditch power drain. Power down, unplug the power supply from the wall outlet, then press the case power button until the power LED fades to black. Reset the BIOS to fail safe defaults with the jumper and or remove the CMOS battery for about 5 minutes. Put the battery back in power up, and see if you can turn the onboard audio off. This is a grasping at straws type of deal so don't expect any miracles.