XW6400 No sound

[Fellanah]

so I've basically done a full reinstallation of windows to windows 10 and everything is all fine, except the sound. so I went over to the downloads section to download the audio drivers for the workstation. that did not do the trick either so I went ahead to the bios, enabled the onboard audio and same result. this time though, it shows "realtek" as my main device but no sound whatsoever. Has anyone gotten their sound to work? Thanks in advance everyone!

[SDH]

I have the AOM (Audio On Motherboard) Realtek chipset working fine on xw6400 workstations with W7Pro64 and W10Pro64 installs.  A thing to know is that the HP SoftPaq installers for Realtek drivers, and many more, are packaged by HP but provided by the vendor as universal installers.  As such, a Realtek installer download for a recent workstation will work with older workstations.

For example, download the Realtek installer for the HP Z640 by google of Z640 drivers/ audio.  It was released by HP on 12/16/16, covers W7-10, and is SoftPaq SP78721 with driver 6.0.1.7945.

For these drivers in W10 the first thing I do is go into the equivalent of the W7 Programs and Features control panel and delete anythng that has "Realtek" in it.  Even go through the equivalent of C/ Programs/Programs 86/and the normally hidden ProgramData folders and delete anything with "Realtek" in it.  Then run the SoftPaq.

Some video cards have audio chipsets built in..... I do a similar uninstall, and then custom install choosing to not include any audio drivers for the card so there is no conflict with the AOM.  I have never not gotten the on-board audio chipset to work on these older workstations, but it can be tricky at times.  Let me know if you need my BIOS replicated setup file for the xw6400 running W10Pro64.

[Fellanah]

thanks for the quick response! Ill try what you said when I get back home today. very nice to know that the latest audio drivers will work for mine as well. also, I have excluded the audio driver for my GPU so that's not the culprit. I'll tell you the results when I get back home thanks!

[Fellanah]

so I have done so but still the same. it says it's playing audio in the volume mixer but no sound is coming out at all. is a soundcard worth it?

[SDH]

You have the latest BIOS installed?  Is your internal speaker working with another OS?  Are you running an internal speaker or using the lime green speaker output for external speakers on the backplane?  Those turned on and working on another PC if present?

Are you sure your settings in BIOS are correct.  The on-board audio chipset can be turned off in there.

I can post my replicated setup file from one of my xw6400s running W10Pro64 with the on-board audio working fine, if you'd like.   Read up on Replicated Setup here in the forum if you don't know how to use that BIOS feature if you're interested.

[SDH]

Here is another idea that I'd recommend:

I have seen the W10Pro64 install on xw6400 and xw6600 (and would expect same on xw8400/xw8600) break the network driver.  The driver in Device Manager stayed with the same version and date as the network driver in other same type HP workstations that I'd got activated with good networking.  So, my theory was that perhaps somehow the installed driver itself had become corrupted.  So, I went into Device Manager and went to the Network adapters section, expanded it, right clicked on the Broadcom entry there, dragged down to Uninstall, and proceeded.  This will cause that hardware to vanish from the list, but on restart the driver repository on your C drive will reinstall automatically, and that reinstalled driver (with same number/date) would work reliably.

So, try this approach for your Device Manager's Sound, video and game controllers section and target the Realtek High Definition Audio entry for uninstall, then restart.

I'd check first, however, that your on board audio is not turned off in the Security section of BIOS.  I have seen workstations that previously had an audio card added to them (and thus the on board audio was turned off on purpose) and then when you get the workstation used without the card in place you don't know to turn that back on..... 

[Fellanah]

I'm very sure I have enabled onboard audio in the BIOS settings and yes, im using the lime green line for my 1 ring earphone (I don't think rings are that important though :p) what's weird is that when I plug the earphones in and I play around with the sound mixer, normally it would play the sound when I change the volume but I get a very short hi-hat like sound. I am also using the latest BIOS version which I think is 2.38. you don't think it's possible that the onboard audio jacks broke? I'm also willing to try the replicated set up you're talking about. I'll try uninstalling the device driver before I do so though, thanks!

[SDH]

I'll get you that replicated text file in a few days.... I want to recheck all the BIOS settings and that xw6400 is not in use right now.  You can PM me your email address, or I can just copy/paste it to a reply here and hope you can convert it.

At the very least you can capture yours from BIOS and compare line by line.... it's not hard at all.

[Fellanah]

no rush! I'm just glad someone's helping me at least

[SDH]

Another thought.... make sure your internal speaker is plugged in, and does not have a broken wire.

I used to be able to insert selected documents like PDF or .txt but that seems to have gone away.  Below is a copy/paste form the small 10KB .txt file that the HP Replicated Setup system built into BIOS creates.  I checked this morning on this xw6400 box running W10Pro64 Creators Update (still has the internal speaker working fine), and this was captured thereafter.

These need to only have the name CPQSETUP.TXT (almost certainly case insensitive).  I use these same BIOS settins for our W7Pro64 builds.  It is optimized for fastest load and high security (with remote access into BIOS via the network off).

The asterix put in by Replicated Setup means that is the BIOS option selected.  We use this method to clone our BIOS settings and thus can clone an install and clone our BIOS and really get nearly identical workstations.  Some of the BIOS settings are processor dependent... you might not see some advanced options if you have a lower level processor.  For anyone interested you probably can just copy all below and use it to create a .txt file with correct name and then use it.  On the original there is no space above English:

English
Product Name
HP xw6400 Workstation
SKU Number
ER236AV
Processor Type
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz
Processor Speed
2333/1333 MHz
Processor 0 Stepping
06FB
Processor 1 Stepping
06FB
Cache Size (L1/L2)
64/4096 KB
Memory Size
16384 MB
System BIOS
786D4 v02.38
Chassis Serial Number
2UA7370BWP
Asset Tracking Number

Family Name
103C_53335X
BIOS Setup Language
*English
Danish
Finnish
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Dutch
Norwegian
Portuguese
Swedish
Spanish
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Disable
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Disable
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8
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--
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--
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User
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0
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--
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0
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0
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0
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*Not Installed
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Diskette
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*Not Installed
8
16
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*Not Installed
--
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*Not Installed
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Off
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0
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--
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User
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0
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0
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*Not Installed
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Diskette
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*Not Installed
8
16
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*Not Installed
--
--
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LBA Assisted
User
Off
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0
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Diskette
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8
16
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*Not Installed
--
--
--
Max UDMA
Translation Mode\SATA 5
*Not Installed
Bit Shift
LBA Assisted
User
Off
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0
Heads\SATA 5
0
Sectors\SATA 5
0
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*None
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Diskette
Optical Disk
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Disable
8
*16
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Off
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65535
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255
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63
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*Not Installed
--
5.25" 1.2 MB
--
3.5" 1.44 MB
Diskette B:
*Not Installed
--
5.25" 1.2 MB
--
3.5" 1.44 MB
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Optical Drive
Hard Drive
USB device
Diskette Drive
PnP Device #1
PnP Device #2
PnP Device #3
PnP Device #4
PnP Device #5
PnP Device #6
PnP Device #7
PnP Device #8
PnP Device #9
PnP Device #10
PnP Device #11
Controller Order
Integrated SATA
Integrated IDE
Integrated SATA RAID
Boot Device #2
Boot Device #3
Boot Device #4
Boot Device #5
Boot Device #6
Boot Device #7
Boot Device #8
Boot Device #9
Boot Device #10
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Boot Device #14
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DE8A847BFF8C343D69B853A215E6EE775EF2EF96
Power-On Password 32
CBD80DD75DE691D9B1319CD131BECC57FEF0A8B4B253DF0EFD6312520DDC0522
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9E1B5E14-622B-11DC-BBDA-C434FAB6001C
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