No sound, Motherboard problem. Replacement question.

Question

Hi,
My friend has no sound on his Inspiron 8500.. (I have the same computer) I tried everything to get it back.. did bios test, called support several times...He brough is computer to his schools computer center and they said it was a problem with his motherboard they said it needed to be replaced in order to get sound...can someone tell me what a replacement is for the 8500..where is the best place to buy.. and is this easy to replace...why wouldn't this be the sound card? or is the sound card built in.. (it's not on warentee anymore)

ejn63 · Answer

First, make sure the board is indeed faulty - you're looking at replacing a $700 part of the system. It is not a trivial replacement.

Does the sound (which is part of the mainboard) fail diagnostics?

If it does, you may want to consider an external USB sound card - for $100 or less, it's a fraction of the cost of a new mainboard (which you must get from Dell, or through a third party, removed from another Dell system).

timmyleve · Answer

Ejn96,
The sound does fail diagnostics. He did buy a external USB sound card a "Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! External Audio Card" for $50, that didn't work. Replacing the mother board is more expensive than I thaught, Looks like he's not going to have sound.. is there any other options.. I wonder why the sound blaster didn't work...best buy told him it would work.

timmyleve · Answer

Hello? Does anyone use this forum?

4fluke · Answer

I've got that card - works fine on my machine.   It certainly improves the sound effects for the games!  You do have to make sure that you follow the instructions for installing the software, and I did notice on my installation that the installation seemed to hang at times, so it is advised that all other software running in the background gets shut down first....

johnallg · Answer

We usually don't help rude people.  Since it failed diagnostics, the sound chip has to be bad.  As for the PCMCIA solution, it had to be driver/software not set up right.

timmyleve · Answer

I wasn't being rude I was just wondering why I wasn't getting any replies. So even though the sound failed diagnostics, I should be able to still get sound from USB external card. I'll have to reinstall the software he probably did do something incorrectly. I am just wondering why I would get sound from the external device when it failed diagnostics.

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No sound, Motherboard problem. Replacement question.

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