Windows 7 Audio Driver for ASUS K8V-VM motherboard, Solution to missing sound.

Have you tried the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating System yet?
If you had stuck with Windows XP rather than going over to the rather unstable Vista then you may want to try the new Windows 7 OS. Its a lot better than Vista, not difficult I know!

The ASUS K8V-VM Motherboard.

 I have installed it on an older machine which has an Asus K8V-VM motherboard in it.
It found all the hardware and installed all the drivers but there was no sound at all.
The Volume icon on the system tray showed a red cross in it, hovering over it showed "You do not have speakers or headphone plugged in", even though it did have.
It took quite a while to sort this problem out so I thought I would share this with anyone else out there who has no sound on their ASUS motherboard after installing Windows 7.

The driver I found fixed the problem and I now have sound on Windows 7.
Normally you would visit the download section of the Motherboard manufacturer but the audio drivers offered on the ASUS website for the K8V-VM would not install on Windows 7, but not to worry as I have the solution for you here.

It may be time to think about getting a new PC, ready to go systems are very cheap these days and come with Windows 7 installed so you know all the hardware is going to be compatible with it :


Here are the specifics :

The motherboard (Mainboard) is a ASUS K8V-VM, This uses an Audio Codec "Realtek ALC660" which is a 6-Channel Codec.

To get the Audio Driver you need to visit the website for the actual manufacturer of the Audio Codec.

So visit :
http://www.realtek.com.tw/

Click The Downloads button at the top of the page.
Click the High Definition Audio Codecs (Software) link
Tick "I accept the above" then wait for the page to update then click Next.
You will now see a page of files available for download, at the top of this list is..

Vista, Windows7 Driver (32/64 bits) Driver only (ZIP file)R2.37 2009/11/20 38690k

Click on the first Go link for Site 1 and download the ZIP file.
Once complete, extract all the files from it and run the setup.exe file.
Run through the installation and it will ask you to reboot.
You now have sound !

This codec may fix the no audio problem on many Asus motherboards. I notice on the Realtek site there is a seperate section for downloading Windows 7 drivers for the following codecs..
RTL8100B(L)/RTL8100C(L)/RTL8101L/RTL8139C(L)RTL8139C(L)+/RTL8139D(L)/RTL8100(L)
RTL8130/RTL8139B(L)

Please leave comment if this fixed the no audio problem on Windows 7.

UPDATE: I have noticed over the last few days that sometimes the sound stops working, looking in the devices shows that the driver has gone which is rather strange. Reinstalling it again brings it back to life, I had to do this about 5 times but then it seemed to stay working for ever. Bare this in mind.

If this happens again then I have a permanent solution and that is to buy a USB External Sound Card.
The one I'm looking at is a Creative Soundblaster X-fi Go, this DOES work with Windows 7 and you dont even need to open up your pc to install it.