Using a gateway mx6421 laptop, installed a 7200rpm hitachi hd to improve performance over the old 4200rpm from the factory. retinstalled windows xp media center, downloaded all drivers from gateway for the mx6421. the drive is much faster and everything works fine with the exception of the audio. the audio driver "fails" during installation. the conexant driver i am using is specific for this laptop model from gateway's website. if i swap out the new drive and use the old one with all the preinstalled software and drivers the sound works fine. but under no circumstances can i get the sound to work with the new drive. i contacted gateways tech support and they were of no help. does anyone have any idea what is wrong? any help would be very much appreciated. thanks.

KillerNotebooks,

Like mp33, I have a Gateway MX6421 Laptop that came with Windows Media Center. Mine also fails to load the audio driver. I tried to view the driver details, but get the message "No driver files are required or have not been loaded for this device." Case still open.

Spanky

KillerNotebooks,

Thanks for the link, but the problem is the driver doesn't work when you install it. I've discovered the problem is the driver needs to be installed manually. I opened the driver installation wizard and then did the have disk option and pointed to the driver. The driver installed manually and now I have sound. mp33, let me know if this works for you too.

Spanky

Downlaod the driver from the link I posted above.
Unzip the contents to a folder on your hard drive I will call for the sake of instruction C:\Audio Driver

Right Click MY COMPUTER
Choose Properties

Click HARDWARE tab

Click DEVICE MANAGER tab

Choose Sound, video and game controllers

Right click the device in question

Choose Update Driver

The wizard will ask you, "Can windows connect to Windows Update to search for software?"
Click No
Click Next

It will ask "What do you want the wizard to do?"
Click "Install from a list or specific location"
Click "Next"

Click the check box "Include this location in the search"
Click browse and browse to the location of the driver (in this explanation it was C:\Audio Driver".

Complete the wizard and you have manually installed the driver.

Ok, here's how I got the sound to work on the MX6421 with XP Media Center. Download the driver and extract it to the Cabs folder (it'll do this automatically). Run the Setup.exe which is in c:\cabs\D00377-002-001 folder. This will not get the sound to work but will get windows to at least see the driver later down. Here is the link to the driver...

http://support.gateway.com/support [...] =177779200

Go to Device Manager (see above posts on how to get there), click on the "multimedia audio controller", click "reinstall driver", click "no, not this time" on the wizard that comes up, check the "install from a list..." and click Next. Click "don't search..." and click Next. Scroll down to "Sound, Video, and Game controllers" and double click on it. Click on Conexant in the left pane and click on "conexant ac-link audio" in the right panel and click Next. You'll get a message saying "installing this driver is not recommended...", click Yes. It may ask to locate a file, if so browse to the c:\cabs folder referenced above. And that's it, sound should now work.

Wow.... This solution actually WORKED! I reinstalled XP Home on a Gateway MX6438 and was stuck on this problem. I looked everywhere for this solution. Thanks for saving the small amount of hair I have.

i had to format my gateway mx6421 and went to gateway and no drivers are working or i am choosing the wrong ones can someone help me with this 1 by 1 with the drivers need help bad my email is
miller764@comcast.net

this thread is still very relevant and the fix still works. thank you toms hardware community!!!