Headphone/speaker does not appear to be plugged in to windows 7

[Huzzey5]

Ok so I finished my new PC, one of the main new parts in the motherboard, a Biostar hifi a85s3.  my older gtx 550 ti, and an AMD APU.  I have everything running well on it (this is posted from said PC) except for I can't get the sound on.  I installed realtek HD audio manager (came on the disk with the mobo) and tried clearing the CMOS afterwards, but windows troubleshooting just says that nothing is plugged in.  I have tried the audio ports on the board, as well as the ones hooked up on the front of the case.  Other than that I have no idea what's causing this or what to do about it.

[DaveLembke]

I'd disconnect the front panel audio cable from location in attached pic and then see if the ports on the motherboard respond to headset attached to the rear of the computer. Some cases come with 2 plugs, one with a loop and the other without a loop. If you get your audio to respond when front panel audio cable is removed then, you know where the problem is, but if the problem remains then it could be a defective board.

With Windows 7, I ran into driver feature issues with Windows 7 on a Biostar MCP6PB M2+, but this board was manufactured for 2000/XP/Vista. My problems with audio are that sound works fine but I have no microphone as well as although the HD Audio Panel that use to display on the screen when a device was added to allow selection for audio system or headset to be selected as the device that is plugged in no longer pops up when this motherboard is running on Windows 7. When it use to run on XP prior using the driver software off the CD that came with the motherboard everything worked including microphone. Biostar has no extended support for this board for Win 7 so I figured out which chipset I had for audio and manually installed a Windows 7 driver and this which should have fixed the microphone port, but it didnt.

I installed the Windows XP hard drive back into this system and the MIC works still so the port isnt bad. Left the hard drive in there in case I ever need to run Windows XP, however I am running Windows 7   99.9% of the time. To fix my MIC issue for gaming in which I need to be able to chat with other gamers in groups I went the easy route of buying a $10 USB Audio adapter which works very well and gives me the ability to chat through vent on this computer.

*Your motherboard should be Windows XP/Vista/7 and might be rated as supporting Win 8, but I didnt find any info on quick search.

[recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]

[Huzzey5]

I'd disconnect the front panel audio cable from location in attached pic and then see if the ports on the motherboard respond to headset attached to the rear of the computer. Some cases come with 2 plugs, one with a loop and the other without a loop. If you get your audio to respond when front panel audio cable is removed then, you know where the problem is, but if the problem remains then it could be a defective board.

I did what you suggested and it hasn't worked yet.  I'm really hoping this isn't defective or anything.

[DaveLembke]

Check in device manager to make sure all is happy and you dont find any with ! or red X's. If you find an issue where there is no audio device installed and something shows in the list as unknown that might be the audio that is not installed correctly.

[Huzzey5]

Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the issue.  :/

[DaveLembke]

Guessing you have tried a different headset etc. So it looks like you may need to RMA the motherboard   

[Huzzey5]

It does look that way   Returning mobos always goes bad for me, I remember last time I went out 400$ on a defective mobo and they wouldn't replace it.  I'm gonna' try and get a speaker that can plug directly into the mobo before I return it, just to make absolute sure.

[DaveLembke]

I'm gonna' try and get a speaker that can plug directly into the mobo before I return it, just to make absolute sure

Thats what I'd do to. Also just for the heck of it poke around in the BIOS and make sure there is nothing overlooked for enable/disable of audio. Some boards have where you can enable/disable features so that they dont conflict with other cards installed etc. A CMOS reset should clear everything back to defaults in which audio should be default of = enable. 

[Calum]

Also might be worth updating the BIOS before you take the step of returning the board...just in case.

[Huzzey5]

UPDATE!

Ok so I went out and bought a basic PCI 4channel sound card and plugged it in, install the drivers.  Lo and behold it worked perfectly!  Hope this can help anyone else who gets stuck in this issue!

Also thanks to all who posted suggestions!

[patio]

For the price of a sound card it'd be a waste of time to RMA the MBoard...
Good to hear you're fixed up.

[DaveLembke]

Good to hear your back up and running with audio .... looks like you had to go with a similar solution to my old Biostar motherboard in which I went with USB audio adapter mainly because my single PCI slot is populated with a 2nd NIC. *The USB audio adapter has surprisingly good recording and audio out quality if anyone comes across this in the future and runs into a situation to where their motherboard has no free slots for a PCI or PCI-E audio adapter replacement/upgrade.