All hardware in Windows is linked to a device, and uses a device driver to make sure Windows can communicate with the hardware. So the most common cause for the no audio device error is that the audio driver is not installed, or corrupted.

In case of the no audio device error, always start by installing or reinstalling your audio driver. If you have a driver CD, simply run the audio driver setup from the CD. If not, download the audio driver from the manufacturer’s website and run the audio driver installer from the downloaded file. If you do not know the manufacturer and model of the sound card, you can use a driver finder program that will automatically detect the sound card and look for the matching driver for you.

If the sound card is integrated in the motherboard, you will need to update or install the motherboard chipset drivers instead of a separate sound card driver. Common motherboard chipset manufacturers are Intel, AMD, Via, Sis, and Nvidia.

The instructions in this article use Windows XP as a sample, but all tips apply in Windows Vista and Windows 7 equally, although the steps can vary a little.

How to check your audio device

To see if there is an error with the audio device or find out the type of sound card installed, you can use the Windows Device Manager. It can be started from the Control Panel -> System -> Hardware (the exact steps vary per Windows version).

In the Device Manager, look under Sound, video and game controllers.

Here you should find the branded audio device based on the audio device chipset manufacturer. In the example this is Realtek, but other examples of audio device manufacturers are C-Media, Creative, Turtle Beach, Yamaha.

If the device has a yellow question mark, there is a problem with the device configuration or driver. If there is no such device, the audio device might not be recognized, and you will find it under the Other devices category and not the Sound, video and game controllers category. Again, this is mostly due to a missing driver. Install the right driver to install the audio device.

Right-click the audio device (or unknown device) in the Device Manager, and in the popup menu select Properties.

The first thing to check is to make sure the option Device usage in the bottom of the window is set to Use this device (enable), otherwise the audio device is disabled.

Next, select the Properties tab, and open up the Audio Devices group.

Click the Properties button to bring up the audio device properties window. In this windows, you want to make sure the radio button Use audio features on this device is selected, and then click OK to close the audio properties window.

Now move to the next tab which is called Driver.

Here you can see the current driver details if any, and initiate the Update Driver wizard as well as select Roll Back Driver. Rolling back a driver can help if you recently updated an audio driver and the sound stopped working after that. Windows keeps a copy of the previous driver, which can be restored by rolling back the driver.

Sound card selection

If your computer has an onboard audio card, and you want to use a separate (pci) sound card, make sure you disable the onboard sound device in the computer BIOS. Resource conflicts can be a cause for audio devices not to be detected, or not to be working properly.

In case you do not have a separate sound card, you might actually need to enables the onboard sound device in the BIOS to get the audio device installed and working.

When you are using a USB audio device, the problem might be related to the USB port and not the audio device directly. Check our article on fixing USB device not recognized problems and how to solve them.

Sound settings in the Control Panel

Apart from the Device Manager, the Sounds and Audio Devices option in the Windows Control Panel can be useful in trying to fix your audio problems. When you click this option and select the Audio tab, you will see:

It is important to select the Default device to be the same as the audio device that you have installed. Especially modem devices often also have a sound device linked to them, which can be set as the default device, which would not give you any audio.

The Volume button can be used to make sure the audio device is not muted and that the volume level is set to a high enough level.

Click the Advanced button to select the speaker configuration.

This is actually quite important, because a wrong speaker configuration will not give you audio as well. The Desktop stereo speaker configuration is the safest selection for most standard computers. Using a 5.1 or higher speaker setup requires exactly that speaker setup and proper connection, otherwise you will not hear any sound as well.

Start the Windows Audio Service

For all devices in Windows, a service is used to make the device function properly. An audio device in Windows also requires the Windows Audio service to be running. You can check this using the Windows services manager.

In the Start menu, select Run, and then type services.msc and press Enter.

This will bring up the Services window.

In the service list, scroll down to the Windows Audio service. The Status of the service should be Started. The Startup Type should be set to Automatic to ensure Windows automatically starts the service whenever Windows starts (boot-up).

If it is not, right-click the Windows Audio service, and in the popup menu select Properties.

In the Windows Audio Properties window, change the Startup type to Automatic and click the Apply button.

Next, click the Start button to actually start the Windows Audio service. Wait for the service to start and then click OK to close the properties window.

Using the tips above, most problems with no audio device in Windows should be solved. If you have a situation where you are still left with no audio device after trying these ideas, leave a comment and I will see if I can offer you a solution.

Automatically updating your Windows drivers is a good first step!

This year brings the promise of not only new smart phones that finally rival the iPhone 3GS but also new eReaders that rival the Amazon Kindle and new 3D HDTV technology that rivals the Hollywood film-making industry. Yes, it’s all true: this year, there are so many more gadgets for you, your PC and your life that it makes any PC geek happy.

Microsoft’s keynote, which I guest appeared on a livestream by Cali Lewis’ Geekbrief.tv, didn’t give us the much rumored Courier (Microsoft’s tablet) but it did shows us a new kind of PC that a lot of us are hungry for: it’s not a netbook, it’s a Slate. Microsoft showed off their prototype HP Slate. According to TechSpot, “The Slate will run Windows 7, and reportedly sports a multitouch display, an accelerometer, and speculation suggests that it’s powered by an x86-based processor. The prototype shown during Microsoft’s keynote was running the PC Kindle app, hinting that the Slate may try to take a bite out of the e-reader market.”

The most interesting of Microsoft’s keynote was Project Natal which is Microsoft’s motion-controlled gaming peripheral that will be coming out in the holiday season of 2010.

Besides Microsoft, eReaders dominated CES 2010. I covered two of them which hold much promise to the Kindle: the Skiff and the Que. Both have 3G wireless connection, both are gorgeously designed, both have touchscreens yet neither have the content system that Amazon has, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.

Last but not least, for us PC lovers, there are going to more and more netbooks, desktops with more power and processing and Windows 7 will continue to take a stronghold on the PC market. This will be a good year, I believe, for us tech and PC lovers.

As I covered in Moxie Mo Show #119, the main themes of this year’s CES will cover mobile platforms, geo-location and GPS devices and apps as well as the obvious (new netbooks, notebooks and powerful desktops).

Google announced today that they have a major announcement in the smartphone area: the Nexus One will be announced tomorrow (Tuesday, January 5th) and reports are already claiming this will be another iPhone killer. So what makes this smart phone so buzzworthy? According to CNN’s Money.com, “The Nexus One smartphone will be wider but slimmer than Apple’s iPhone and faster than Motorola’s Droid, according to a review by tech blog Engadget. The new smartphone was built by mobile device maker HTC, but the specifications were all ordered by Google. It will run Google’s Android 2.1 software on a lightning-fast processor.”

Another big force that will prevail at CES 2010 is 3D technology in the home theater space. JVC and Samsung have already previewed their choice for 3D glasses that they will use for their 3D LCD HD TVs that are expected to be a big buzz in 2010.

As always, I will be covering CES 2010 daily so come back to PC Authorities to check out the latest and greatest in this awesome week!

There are many ways to make backups of files and folder son Windows computers, including the standard Windows backup program. But if you want a bit more flexibility and functionality, a third party program is required.

In this review we looked at Handy Backup, which is a very powerful, but yet easy-to-use program for making backups. Handy Backup is created by Novosoft, a Russian software manufacturer, which has been in business since the early nineties. The program is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, and also with the Windows server versions 2003 and 2008.

You can download a 30-day trial version from the vendor’s website. There are different versions of the program for home, business and enterprise usage, each with more functionality. But for personal use the home version will do fine.

Once downloaded, you need to install the program, which is straightforward, with the exception of the warning about the firewall access. Since Handy Backup supports online backups, it will need internet access, so if you see a warning during setup, make sure to unblock the application.

Once installed, you can start a backup by using the New Task Wizard, that will guide you through all the steps of creating a backup task.

The second step in the backup task is to select what folders to backup. You can select disk level, folder level and file level backups, and there is even an option to select an Outlook backup without knowing the details about the Outlook file details. Depending on the edition of Handy Backup, you can add many more different sources for your backup!

As you can see, the list is quite extensive, which shows the power of the backup program.

Like most backup software, Handy Backup can make a full backup every time or you can use an incremental backup concept if you only want to backup new or changed files.

The destination of your backup is also flexible, there are many options to chose from in Handy Backup. An external hard disk or USB stick is possible, as well as a writable CD or DVD, but even online backups are possible by specifying an FTP site or using the Online Backup Service.

Each destination option has settings such as login details, erase the destination medium before making the backup, recording speed, etc. The options will vary with the choice of destination type.

Handy Backup also supports compression and encryption. Compression can save space on your destination location, but will of course take more processing time. And if security is an issue, the encryption feature will be useful.

The last step in the backup wizard allows you to create a scheduled task or to execute the backup immediately. Scheduling a backup task is a good thing, because people often forget to make backups… including me!

The power of the program actually is partly in the wizards that make the program use to easy. If you take a look at the main interface of the program, it is much less intuitive.

But restoring a backup is just as easy, using the Task Wizard you can simply create a restore task to bring back your backup files.

Overall the program is easy-to-use and performance was also not a problem (depending on the computer system and use of compression and encryption of course). At a cost of only US $39 for the standard edition, the program is certainly good value for money. The extensive functionality clearly shows that the program has gone through several development stages already. If you need more features than available in the standard edition, the professional or server edition might be a better choice.
I will definitely keep on using the program to back up my important files!

Enjoy and Happy Holidays and here’s to a prosperous 2010 for all PC Authorities’ fans!

Yahoo (now owned by Bing):
1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

Google’s Top 10 (Fastest Raising Searches of 2009):
1. Michael Jackson
2. Transformers
3. Eminem
4. Naruto shippuden
5. Beyonce
6. Peliculas id
7. Paranormal activity
8. Anime online
9. Natasha richardson
10. Poker face lyrics

Top Bing Trending Topics:
1) Michael Jackson
2) Twitter
3) Swine Flu
4) Stock Market
5) Farrah Fawcett
6) Patrick Swayze
7) Cash for Clunkers
Jon and Kate Gosselin
9) Billy Mays
10) Jaycee Dugard

In some cases running the inbox repair tool can result in errors that can prevent you from fixing the initial problems in Outlook .pst files. You then need to fix the inbox repair tool error before you can use the tool to actually repair a .pst file. A quick alternate to .pst file repair is downloading the Stellar Outlook PST repair tool.

In this rest of this article I will describe a few types of inbox repair tool errors and ways to fix them.

When using the inbox repair tool you receive an error that says ”Internal errors were found in this file. They must be repaired for this file to work correctly.”

This inbox repair tool error is not a serious error. It means that the “Deleted Items” folder in the .pst file is missing. This happens if the .pst file is a file that is synchronized using the Sharepoint team services. Because the inbox repair tool checks for the presence of all standard Outlook folders, this error will be shown, but can be ignored in this case.

Another inbox repair tool error is “An error has occurred which caused the scan to be stopped. No changes have been made to the scanned file.”

This error is a real problem, since the .pst file scan was interrupted and no results were realized. In effect your corrupt .pst file is still the same. One of the possible causes is the size of the .pst file, so first try to compact the folder in Outlook before running scanpst.exe (that is of course, if you can still access the .pst file with Outlook). Using the Microsoft PST2GB tool to fix the size can also help in case of the older .pst file format.

An inbox repair tool error that has the same cause (the large .pst file) is “Fatal Error: 80040900”. Again, try to compress the .pst file from within Outlook if you can, or otherwise use the PST2GB tool from Microsoft to truncate the .pst file.

In some cases the Inbox Repair Tool error prevents the tool from starting altogether. Often this is the result from an external dependency, like a missing .dll file. In most cases this is the result of the scanpst.exe not being in the right location after a download of the inbox repair tool. Run the Office setup and repair the Office installation (or reinstall in the same location) to fix this issue.

Alternate Outlook Repair Options

Apart from the inbox repair tool, there are more tools to fix problems with Outlook and Outlook .pst files. In Outlook 2007, you can try running the Microsoft Office Diagnostics. You can start the Office Diagnostics from the Start menu, All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Tools, and then start Microsoft Office Diagnostics.

Click Continue in the first window, and then click Run Diagnostics.

Processing will take a bit of time, but it can help find errors in Outlook 2007 easily and fix them for you.

Use the PST2GB tool from Microsoft to reduce the size of your .pst file. Especially with the older .pst file format, large .pst files can become a serious concern and cause Outlook errors.

Check your file system format. Older computer systems might still use the FAT32 file system, which has size limitations for single files. If Outlook tries to create a file that is larger than that limit, problems are going to be the result. Change the file system from FAT32 to NTFS to prevent these issues. Simply right-click any disk icon in the Explorer and select Properties in the popup menu. You will then see the File system used for the disk.

If you are using Outlook in a network setup with a Microsoft Exchange server, your local file will be .ost and not .pst. In that case use the scanost.exe file, which is located in the same location as the scanpst.exe.

In general, try to make use of the new .pst file format that supports Unicode. There is no size limit to that format, so problems are less likely to happen as a result of that. If you still have files in the “Outlook 92-2002 Personal Folders File” format, you might want to consider creating a new .pst file in the “Office Outlook Personal Folders File” format and move all items from the old to the new file.

Of course there are also commercial solutions to fixing Outlook .pst files. These tools are a bit more advanced than the standard Microsoft tools. Scanpst.exe is in general only able to fix header and file layout issues, and not real data recovery problems.

The two most known commercial tools for recovering data from Outlook .pst files are Stellar Outlook PST Repair and Disk Doctor’s Outlook Mail Recovery. Both have various options for solving problems with Outlook .pst files. These tools can fix pst file size problems, repair corrupt pst files, and even recover passwords for pst files. So if the standard Microsoft tools can not help fix the errors, one of these might be able to restore your inbox access or recover .pst file data.

If you experience other inbox repair tool errors, leave a comment and I’ll try to add the error and the solution to the article.

For Microsoft Powerpoint beginners, this video tutorial shows users how they can add images or pictures into their Powerpoint slide to create a more illustrative presentation.

PDF format is becoming more and more common and required for business use. The following video illustrate how you can expand the function of Excel 2007 by downloading a free plug-in from Microsoft to enable Excel to “Save As” excel files into PDF format automatically.

Once the plug-in has been installed, this “Save As PDF” function is also now available for Word 2007.

Note: This plug-in is only for Office 2007 programs.

DriverFinder Installation

Downloading and installing DriverFinder is pretty straightforward. The installation wizard is simple and will guide the user through the installation steps.

The program is compatible with all the most recent Windows versions, ranging from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, including the 64-bit versions. Many other driver update programs are not (yet) compatible with Windows 7, so DriverFinder is ahead in that area. I ran it on a HP Pavillion system with the Vista 64-bit OS.

DriverFinder Program Review

When starting the DriverFinder program, you see the main application screen. The first time I ran the program, it automatically executed a system scan to check for driver updates on my system.

Once the scan was complete, the program reported the driver update results. It shows the number of drivers scanned as well as the number of outdated drivers. As you can see in the screenshot, I had 11 outdated drivers according to the program.

The program interface is simple and straightforward, alike some of the other driver update tools available, although the blue color scheme is rather distinct. I kind of like it, but most importantly, it is intuitive.

As mentioned, I ran the program on a Vista 64-bit HP system, and it resulted in 11 out of date drivers. To see the details of the drivers that can be updated, I clicked the View button. This brings up to the following screen.

The screen lists the devices by name, including the current and the new available driver version. This is a good thing, as in many other programs you can not even see the new versions until you register the product.

The program has an option to download all new found drivers in one go by clicking the green Fix Now button. If you prefer to download each driver individually, you can click the blue Download buttons next to each device in the list.

Before you can use the program to actually download the drivers, you need to buy a license and activate the software, so that is what I did. The software has a 60 day money back guarantee, so plenty of time test and see if I like it. After registering the application, I clicked the Fix Now button, which starts the driver download.

All outdated drivers are downloaded automatically, and the driver download speed is rather fast. In my case the ISP connection was the download speed limitation (I am on a 4 Mbit connection).

I noticed that each driver is backed up automatically before the download starts. This is a nice safety feature that allows you to restore the driver in case something goes wrong. It is also possible to manually backup and restore the drivers, and I was glad to see that this program uses a separate driver backup folder and does not rely on the Windows System Restore function. You can copy these driver backup files to an external storage device.

Once the driver downloads complete, the programs opens an Explorer window with the download location. You can see all the folders that contain the downloaded driver files.

But it is simpler to access the drivers from within the program itself! Once the driver download finishes, the Download buttons change to Open or Install.

Clicking one of the Open buttons will open the driver file for that device in your default archive program (zip/rar). Now you can install the driver from there, or extract the driver file contents to a location that can be used to update the driver.

The Install button is only available if the program is able to automatically install the downloaded drivers. Clicking one of the Install buttons will launch the driver installation program, as shown in the sample below:

If you do not want a device to be updated, you can right-click the device in the list and click the Ignore Driver option. The device will now no longer be checked for updates, so you can keep your current driver. It can simply be included again by opening the Ignored Drivers list and right-clicking the device again. Now select Do not ignore driver and your device will be included in the driver update check again.

DriverFinder also checks for driver updates for unplugged devices, which is very handy if you do not always have your (USB) printer turned on, or use a GPS device, mobile phone or other device that requires a driver but is not always plugged in to your computer. I saw my Canon digital camera, the Garmin GPD device, my Officejet that was turned off, and even my MP3 player.

The backup and restore functions of DriverFinder are again straightforward. You can backup all drivers in one go, or make backups of individual drivers. Restoring is only possible on a per driver basis, which makes a lot of sense of course. I ran the backup all and tried a few restores and it all worked as expected.

The DriverFinder program Settings allow the user to change the location for the backup and download, as well as control program start and update checks. I want to keep my PC startup speed fast, so I disable all automatic program starts. I also changed the backup and download locations to my secondary hard disk.

If you are in a corporate network, the Proxy Settings will most likely be required, I did not test with that any further.

Don’t forget to click the Save button if you make any changes… it happened to me and I thought the settings feature did not work at first!

In the main screen, there are 2 more tabs that I want to mention. The first is the Device List, which is a list that is very similar to the standard Windows Device Manager. When you click a device, you can see the device details in one view, including the manufacturer, driver version and hardware id. Convenient if you want to verify some details.

The other tab is called System, and it shows you the details of your computer.

Here we can see that DriverFinder accurately identified my computer brand and model, which can be used when checking for driver updates.

The program support seems good. There is a local help file to guide you in the basic program use, and the Support link brings you to an online support system, where you have access to a FAQ list as well as a ticket system.

Conclusion

Compared to competitors, DriverFinder is a rather good and easy-to-use program to find and update drivers. The device drivers available seem extensive and accurate, all downloaded drivers installed without problems. I will run it on more systems to see how it performs on those. In general though, the program makes a thorough and reliable impression on me. What I also like is that the driver files are the full driver packages, including any applicable support software (control panels, etc.). Many of these programs offer driver updates that are really stripped down versions that contain the driver files only (.sys, .cat, .inf, etc).

The graphical user interface is a very personal matter, but functionality-wise the product is easy-to-use. Product pricing (US$ 34.95) is similar to what other products cost in the market, so it comes down to personal preference and which tool gives you the best driver updates. As mentioned, the 60-day money back guarantee made me more confident to try it out.

Ready to give it a try yourself? Download DriverFinder now.

Here’s a video tutorial for MS Excel users who would like to create charts in their Excel files. This is one way of adding an illustrative presentation of your data in Excel for better presentation and reporting purposes.