A Note about Realtek HD Audio Drivers from MS Update

[CrankCantankerous]

Just something quick to relay for those of you building new boxes - specifically with gigabyte boards, windows vista 64-bit and planning on using the onboard audio at all.

After installing the drivers from the disc and installing tf2, it worked fine, until I installed the 'recommended' realtek audio drivers through windows update, at which point I would get complete system freezes - though I didn't know that's what it was.

After going through the steam support faq, it was suggested it was related to audio drivers, and to run the game in question (for me, tf2) with the -nosound option to see if the freezes happened. When they didn't, I yanked the drivers that I got from MS and installed the ones I downloaded directly from Realtek, and it's been smooth sailing since.

Additionally, it fixed one other system stability issue, where the box would bluescreen upon resuming after being in sleep mode.

So the quick warning is: be careful about the windows-update supplied realtek hd audio drivers!

 

[Metatron]

Those are the drivers realtek has had people deal with for ages now. They recently updated their site to stop crashing people's pcs.

 

[Ducttape]

I have a Gigabyte motherboard with HD audio.

After I installed Vista, the audio worked fine so I never bothered installing the realtek drivers ..

My Antec case included front audio connectors for both AC97 and HD audio motherboards. Just to experiment, I hooked up the AC97 connector to my motherboard once; system locked up when I tried to plug my headphones in.

I reconnected the HD audio and cut the AC97 connector out. Hope I never switch to a motherboard that needs the AC97 connector...

haven't had any issues with Vista yet ::knock on wood::