Question : Problem: Sound Card Drivers

I am looking for an audio driver for a laptop: Compaq Presario F500.

I formated it lately and installed XP Pro. I couldn't find the audio driver for this laptop. It's out of warranty so i can't call Compaq for help. I do not have any driver CDs that came with the unit either.

The audio driver is not listed on the drivers download page on the compaq site. I also googled and couldn't find any major leads on where to download this driver from. I did try to have windows install it by adding a new hardware and all that with no luck.

If someone can please provide a link to where i can get it downloaded from, I would be grateful.
Thank you

Answer : Problem: Sound Card Drivers

Maybe we can walk through and find the drivers from the manufacturers...
1. Right Click on My Computer, Left click on Manage.
2. Click on Device Manager, you should notice on the right hand side icons with a yellow symbol next to them, this shows the device is unknown, or drivers are not installed.
3. Right click a device you are looking for, left click on properties.
4. Click on the Details tab on the top of the menu that popped up.
5. You should see some code in the middle that looks similar to this:
            "PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_169C&SUBSYS_308&"
The important peices are:
   VEN_14E4    is    Vendor 14E4
   DEV_169C    is    Device 169C    for     Vendor    14E4

You can take this information to the website http://www.pcidatabase.com and find the specific device information for the drivers, then go to the manufacturer website and see if they make drivers for Windows XP, some hardware is Vista specific and the manufacturer's do not have driver support for Windows XP.

*Once you are in the Vendor and are searching for the Device you can hold CTRL and press 'F'.
-This is the Find feature, type in the Device ID and it will find it much quicker, since some pages are quite long.

Hope this helps!