aj21

i have an old dell dimension 4550 that was given to me to fix. the sound card does not work. it says there is no audio controller connected. so i went to the dell website and downloaded the audio drivers... installed them and i keep getting the same error message, "driver not found please reboot and reinstall" any ideas????

[-0MEGA-]

Maybe i'm not understanding you right, but you said that the sound card doesnt work and you receive a message about the audio controller not being connected. If thats the case, then theres no way a driver will fix that, you would need to use a working sound card.

__________________
Desktop // Laptop
Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 4.0GHz // Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz
Asus Rampage Formula X48 // Intel PM45
ATI 4870X2 2GB GDDR5 // 512MB GDDR3 9800M GTS
4GB (2x 2GB) DDR2 940 // 4GB DDR3 800
750GB SATAII w/32MB // 200GB SATAII 7200RPM
Creative SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
SilverStone 750W +12V@60A
3DMark06: 21391 // 9179

The_Other_One

I'm not exactly sure about that model, but many Dell machines had multiple sound card options. I'd first double check what it has inside. Find the codec chip or the "off-board" sound card(Sound Blaster Live, Audigy...) and get corresponding drivers.

If you're sure you have the correct drivers, try installing without using the "setup" file. In other words, find the error in Device Manager than go into it and update the driver. The downloaded package should have a .ini file. Point windows to this and it should work...

__________________
Desktop * Athlon X2 4200 | 2G RAM | 160G HD | 7600GT
Laptop1 * C2D T5550 | 3G RAM | 120G HD | Intel x3100
Laptop2 * C2D T5250 | 2G RAM | 160G HD | Intel x3100

Vista

Go to the start button, go to run and type in dxdiag. Check what is mentioned under the sound tab (you'll find both the name of the sound card there, even if it is onboard, and the drivers used).

__________________
HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop
Intel Pentium 4 3.40 Ghz 1 Go RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X600 256 MB
Toshiba MK1031GAS 100 Go HDD
TSST corp CD/DVDW TS-L532M