Front panel audio gone MIA after bios update?

Quake_City

Hi all, I just updated new bios on my P5GC-MX motherboard and that went ok I guess; only thing my headphones weren’t working in the front panel any more after reboot, at first? (Line out port works 100%)
I needed to unplug my speakers from the Line out port and re-plug them back in before the Front panel audio would work? So I found the latest drivers and guess what? Now my front panel audio won't work at all! (Nice going realtek/Asus)
If I can’t fix this software is there any other software that will run this hardware?
Any help in sorting this mystery out would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers Q_C

Quake_City

Ok I’m getting no takers with the harder question. Here’s something easier. If the front panel audio won’t work from the front panel audio out , can I get audio if I use a USB device fron the front panel instead?
Cheers Q_C

craig5320

If you use a USB audio device on the frontpanel, and the frontpanel USB is working then it should work fine as it doesn't use your sound hardware.

I'd rollback the drivers, from what you say it was all working correctly on the old drivers once you unplugged and reinserted the rear audio? so what's the problem? Put the previous drivers on and wait for another update.

Craig

Quake_City

Could the reason why the bios and new drivers don’t support the plug-in jack type audio in the front panel be, because it’s technology that’s on its way out? More and more headphones for computers are going the USB way?
I remember the old outlook express, and how the spell check went MIA when you updated to IE 7 and Microsoft didn’t have a patch to fix it? I believe it was because outlook is old news with windows live and Live mail.
Developers may not want to waste time writing software for old technology on the way out?
Because it makes no sense why new bios and drives should nuke my front panel audio, they can’t be that stupid can they?
There's no problem I’ve wanted to get a set of USB headphone for a while, this gives me a good enough excuse!

Tipstaff

Check your manual, page 2-24.

In the bios there is a section under Advanced | Onboard Devices Configuration that deals with how it should handle the HD Audio Controller, which is either enabled or disabled. The option to pay attention to is the one under that option, and it's how the bios will handle the front panel connector. The options for that setting is either AC97 (old standard, no jack sensing, always on, and uses 7 wires), or HD Audio (jack sensing, is only on when something is plugged into the port, and uses 8 or 9 wires).

Here's the issue: most likely your front panel is connected to the motherboard using the AC97 standard (either that or it's not connected correctly). If so, the bios can't sense the ports, so having the bios option set to "HD Audio" essentially makes the front panel audio useless. The default of any bios is to have that option set to HD Audio, so when you updated the bios that setting probably got set back to HD Audio. What you need to do is change the setting in the bios to AC97, and it should kick in again.

Quake_City

I checked and the front panel connector is connected like whats in the manual (unplugged it and checked the front panel end as well) and it must be connect right or it would have never worked in the first place. I tried switching from in bios the HD Audio to AC97 and back again, tried disabling the HD Audio before my last post, both didn’t work.
I nuked the latest version of drivers like our erudite friend advised and got it back to the stage where I just need to unplug the speakers for the Line out port at the back and the Front panel audio works again.
I’m not really dirty on it because I’ll keep my eye out for a pair of USB headphone on EBay, there were some really nice Creative USB ones for around 45 bucks a few months ago here in OZ, or the guy’s at ASUS might get the act together and come up with user friendly bios first, whatever!

Cheers Q_C