Issues

Ever since reinstalling Windows, I haven't been back at 100% (despite my post titled "Back at 100%"...).  The computer is back into a day-to-day operational state, meaning all the stuff I use on a regular basis is installed, configured, and working to my satisfaction, but I don't have everything fully back to the way it was.

One of those outstanding issues is that the line in on my motherboard's integrated sound card has mysteriously stopped working correctly.

My first thought is to attribute this to the rather old drivers I installed, that are on the disc that came with the motherboard when I bought it, eight years ago.  Going to Realtek's site yields drivers, but with the notice that I'd probably be better off with drivers from my motherboard manufacturer.  Getting those is rather tricky as my motherboard manufacturer (Abit) no longer makes motherboards and their site seems to be down.  There are plenty of mirrors, including Softpedia, but it's difficult to sort out which drivers are going to be the latest version available.  The thing is, I don't recall ever updating the drivers to begin with, and it worked prior to the reformat/reinstall.

Allow me to more fully describe the issue.  Initially, it worked just fine, but was almost inaudible in the right channel.  After doing a connector sense in the Abit Sound Effect Manager control panel, the left channel became just as quiet as the right channel.  Okay, so all I need to do is crank the volume, right?  Wrong.  Taking the volume above about two and a half in the Windows mixer causes audio from line in to drop out entirely, as if it were muted.  Dragging the slider makes weird scratchy noises come out of my speakers while the slider is between zero and the aforementioned two and a half area.  It's probably worth noting that in my operational setup prior to reinstalling I kept the line in volume at about two and a half to keep it reasonably balanced with the rest of the sounds on my computer.

Checking and unchecking the Mute checkbox in the Windows mixer causes an audible popping noise from my speakers, that never used to happen before.

Also, with line in unmuted, my computer's regular sounds are severely distorted.  This never used to happen either.

I'd really like to get this working, so I don't have to move my speakers back and forth between my PS2 and my computer.

I know you can get driver updates for Windows via Windows Update, and I've seen updates for my graphics card drivers on there before, but never my sound card.

So, if any of the maybe three people who are reading this have an idea, comment or something.  I've been in the sea of zero (0) comments for too long anyway.