High definition sound driver

This is a common problem with Asus motherboards, it's usually a defective board.
Overall, you are better off returning the board and buying a different brand, like Gigabyte.
You can go through Asus customer service, don't expect that to move along at a pace you would be happy with.
You can install drivers over and over, and install operating system over and over, but it frequently is just a big waste of time.
On the other hand, you can buy another board (like gigabyte) install it with all the current hardware, it works the first time and keeps working.
If you wish to wait out the Asus repair process, invest in an aspirin factory.

Thank you "soundguruman" for your advice.
Actually I already had to replace a defective Asus motherboard. All the bureaucracy was handled by the vendor (a small shop in San Diego, named Computer Depot) who took care of the motherboard and phoned when the new one was available. It took some three weeks. As this was, and is, my only experience with such a chore, I do not know whether it was the case to take an aspirin. I survived without.
My problem could have been the consequence of the difficulty to write on a defective hard disk (an old sata-1 drive once part of a raid array. After the raid metadata were erased it did not behave properly any more. Its behaviour was erratic, just to be kind).
After a low level reformatting, I was able to reinstall right away, in a few hours, both Win XP pro and Fedora 13 (double boot) on the very same motherboard. And to date (OK it is only a few days) everything is working smoothly.
The first thing done after installing Fedora was to run the automatic install of the Asus support disk, which worked without problems, installing the drivers NOT IN THE SAME ORDER as listed on the first screen, and with no 0xE0000227 error.
Here I have to repeat what was already under my blind eyes when writing the first post. The 0xE0000227 error means that the program is not able to write on the disk.
Thus the HD health appears critical, and the following seems to confirm this.
It might be that installling the drivers not in a proper order is the cause of the 0xE0000227 error, but my experience in this case says that I have to look closely at the disk, and to what the installer seeks in the MBR before writing down a driver.
Which remains unknown to me, and so will remain until I stumble again on a similar problem.
fcelentano

Sorry, there was a mistake in my last post.
I run the Asus support disk after installing win XP, not Fedora.
After installing Fedora I run the linux drivers found in the Asus support site.
fcelentano