Realtek audio card on the Intel Atom motherboard

Well, again here's an example of another great piece of design that completely threw the end user, i.e. me!

When I built my Intel Atom based machine, I had some issues with the audio drivers. I was a bit surprised. I installed Vista Ultimate first and then used the CD that came with the motherboard. This even seemed to contain drivers intended specifically for Vista. The graphics drivers worked a treat and the overall performance of the machine improved as I commented on in a previous blog. However, the audio continued to prove a problem.

Every time I fired up the Media Center software, it would fail to display any live television. It would display an error message stating "No audio device found". Even the audio icon in the system tray seemed to display that it had a problem. I assumed that it was a problelm with the drivers and re-installed them from the CD. No luck. So I reverted to the Realtek site and downloaded a fresh set of drivers. But same problem.

I was stumped and decided to plug in a set of speakers just to check what was going on. Guess what? A dialog box appeared on the screen as soon as I plugged the speakers in! "New audio device" found! Well, I suppose that a set of speakers counts as an "audio device", but it wasn't obvious.

Again, I have to admire the engineer that designed this. It was a great idea. But it just didn't work - all it needed was a better error message and it would have counted as being real cool! As it is, it is just another one of those things that threw me.