Need help... my internal sound card is evil

Hi everyone, sorry to be so annoying with this, but my mainboard has an internal sound card... but I can't find any drivers that will work with it (I looked for names on the main board that may suggest what I need... but there isn't any I can find :( )
is there some sort of software that can detect sound cards and tell me what kind of driver I need?
I figure it's possible because software and sites claim to be able to do it... and actually detect the card... but they say I have to register to get names... and I don't feel like paying the prices they say just for an internal sound card driver...
Does anyone know any free software that does this sort of scan?
Making games is wierd if you don't have sound :|

You should be able to find it in Control Panel > System > Hardware and click on the device manager button. Then under Sounds, Video and Game Controllers. Theres a list of things there.

What motherboard is it?

Not if there are no drivers installed for it.

This software:

http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

Should help you find out what motherboard and sound drivers you will need.

[edit] forgot to mention that the home-edition is freeware, and that it will actually give you a website link to where you can download drivers (if it knows your hardware, which there is a big chance that it will)

Look at your motherboard itself -- most of the time you'll find some silkscreen print on the motherboard along the edge near the bottom of your computer case, or in a box near your CPU. You should see a manufacturer and typically also a model number. You can use that info to visit the website of the manufacturer in question, they pretty much all have drivers for the onboard devices up for download. Same for rand-name computers like Dell, IBM, HP, etc. where you can find the drivers on the company website based on the type & model of the computer itself.

If everything else fails, just keep in mind that the vast majority of onboard soundcards these days appear to be either based on AC97 or SoundMax, so you can try those drivers as well.

Some also use C-Media sound, definately take a look at the motherboard for a version number, you can also look at the information when your pc is first turned on (Bios stuff). It might contain some board identification.

That shouldn't matter. As long as the onboard sound has been turned on in the BIOS, Windows should detect new hardware and attempt to load drivers for it. It's plug-n-play. Even if you can't load drivers it should still be listed in Device Manager as a non-working device, AFAIK.

big10p, Yep, but it wont tell him what it actually IS. :P so it wont help :)

It will most likely just say "Audio device" or something.

Really? I thought it gave more info than that. :/

Nope, Not normally.

The sound card will only have a Device ID on it, windows uses that to extract a device name from INF files :) If there are no INF files with the Dev ID in, then it doesnt know what its called.

Thats my take on it anyway. I could be wrong on it, but my computers still just display "Audio device"- i forget the exact wording.

In fact, you can also get hardware placed in "Unknown Devices" or whatnot in Device Manager.

I'll replace these with the real terms when i get home to check.

OK, forget what I said, then. :)

I *thought* PnP devices tell windows exactly what they are, not just gave a device ID. Seems a bit lame.

Anyway, aren't all onboard sound chips standard? Like, if you have an AC97 (or whatever it's called) then you just need an AC97 driver?

...what am I saying!? It's never going to be that simple. :P

Definately not.

If it is a well known onboard sound brand (such as C-Media) it may be as simple as visiting Microsoft Update.

I've noted some flakiness with the C-Media drivers on MSUpdate though, so if anybody uses that keep it in mind - it may be worth installing the drivers on C-Media's site if you have problems (even though they are dated 2 years earlier).

You would need the correct AC97 driver for it then, and there's quite a few to choose from depending on your mobo...

I actually had to do this for a friends PC, in the end the "Add Hardware" function under Control Panel picked up the onboard card and installed the drivers (C-Media) for it, wish that thing was more reliable as it doesn't detect uninstalled hardware 90% of the time.
(least those drivers were on the PC to begin with)