Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (
More info?)
I had this issue and thought I'd see if anyone had a quick fix. When I
found a lot of people having this issue with no solution, I used my
knowledge of XP and the registry and made my own.
I posted this here to answer the forum question, and in case someone
else has this issue and stumbles upon this and wants information in a
concise format rather than having to read a whole forum thread like
that link pointed to in the other post, and who also wants to know how
to get rid of this altogether rather than just the superficial fix that
other forum had, so here goes:
*Background*: This error occurs after trying to uninstall the updated
C-Media AC'97 onboard sound driver that appears after upgrading to XP
SP2 and/or going to WindowsUpdate. Likely the driver didn't work, so
you tried uninstalling the driver and were going to put back the old
Realtek AC'97 driver, but couldn't get rid of the updated driver.
*To fix:* Go ahead and do the deletion of -cmaudio- from the registry
that the other post had (Start, Run, type in "regedit", no quotes), and
delete the -cmaudio- string from
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. This
makes it so it will not run on startup and try to find the cpl file that
was deleted during the uninstall or not installed correctly by the
installer in the first place, whichever your case depending on when you
started seeing the error. To get your sound working again if it isn't,
read on -
Click on the top computer icon in the Registry Editor to highlight it
(so that it will do a complete search of the registry and not just from
your present point forward), do a Find (Ctrl+F) and find and delete all
_KEYS_ related to *-cmaudio*- and *-C-Media*-, not just the string
entries, but the KEYS, _except_ for that entry in the Run key I
mentioned above, just delete the cmaudio -string- for that one.
Delete the string "CMCPlus" from
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control
Panel\Cpls to get rid of the Control Panel icon, and delete the file it
points to that resides in C:\Windows\System32.
Download this remove utility from
'http://ekiis.com/Freesoft/binary/remove11.zip'
(http://ekiis.com/Freesoft/binary/remove11.zip)
and run the file you find in the zip file - it can be ran without
extracting it from the zip. Take out the C-Media Audio Driver line.
-- *NOTE:* This utility is for taking the name out of the Add/Remove
Programs section -_only_-, and does not remove it from your computer,
but it is very useful for issues like this when we are MANUALLY
uninstalling a program to take it out of the Programs list and should
work in 98/ME/2000/XP.
Delete these files from the C:\Windows\System32 directory (or "System"
directory for Win98)
cmirmdrv.exe
cmirmdrv.dll
cmuda.dll
Delete everything you can readily delete in C:\Temp,
C:\WINDOWS\prefetch (XP only), C:\WINDOWS\Temp, and C:\Documents and
Settings\%YourName%\Local Settings\Temp (2000 and XP only), so that
there will not be any files left for it to try to recover the driver
from. You will likely have to leave things that start with hsperfdata_
and Perflib_Perfdata_***.dat files if you find them, but should be able
to delete most others without changing attributes.
Now open the Device Manager (Right-click "My Computer", hit "Manage",
then find Device Manager in the Computer Management console).
Right-click the C-Media WDM driver under Sound, video, and game
controllers, hit Uninstall. Then right-click the top computer icon
listed there with your hostname beside it, hit "Scan for hardware
changes". It should install a generic "Multimedia Audio Controller"
instead of the "C-Media WDM Audio Driver", though you might see that
C-Media Audio for just an instant before it reverts back to a generic
driver (if it stays, you'll have to go back through the registry again,
delete the system files again, and do a full search of your hard drive
for those files so they don't get re-copied again). From here you can
'download your specific Realtek AC'97 Audio Driver'
(http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/891.htm) setup.exe file or
use your motherboard's installation CD to re-install and you should
have sound again.
Good luck.
--
navyjax2
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