Weird but true, sometimes when I reboot my onboard audio driver reinstalls itself like it was never even installed in the first place :S any ideas what the heck it means? I downloaded the newest drivers to hopefully fix this weird issue but I'm not holding my breath (considering my past experiences with PCs)

If you went to the device manager and found that driver then had it updated , that should take care of the problem of getting a new driver.

Do you think the onboard audio is damaged? I mean I've installed the newest drivers right now but am almost positive this will happen again. This crappy MSI K9A2GM :-P I mean I get a feeling the onboard audio is damaged otherwise why in the hell would Vista be reinstalling the drivers on a reboot as if it were never installed in the first place? To me it seems like this:

1. Vista installs onboard audio
2. Vista rebooted
3. Vista fails to detect onboard audio initially
4. Onboard audio probably wasn't working?!
5. Drivers reinstalled as if they were never installed initially thereby erasing all settings

I suppose Vista might be at fault but how can it be? Ugh

Can you just remove the audio program from the Add/Remove programs? Then reinstall it from a site that has a download of it.

I had the same problem with a Canon printer under XP. Every time you booted the PC you got the 'New hardware found' wizard trying to re-install the driver. Never solved it, I just don't boot the machine often enough for it to be a pain.

It's possible that the OS's Heuristic modification detection is removing the driver after installation because it hasn't been identified as a legitimate installation. This has occurred a few times with certain drivers on Vista in the beginning when they were still ironing out the problems and why so many people decided to stick with XP.

Obviously the suggestion is to look for a new driver which you've done, one that supports the OS rather than being emulated from a previous Windows Version. If it continues to be a problem I'd suggest harassing Realtek's Support forums with the problem, they might have a solution and if they don't, knowing there is a problem will help them remedy it in the future.

vista 64bit? Maybe that's a 32bit driver. Get a cheap pci sound card.

vista 64bit? Maybe that's a 32bit driver. Get a cheap pci sound card.

I don't think he has the 64 bit Vista. I've seen many Vista in laptops that were all only 32 bit.:shrug:

Didn't you hear, I built a quad core amd desktop :S

I'm waiting to see if Vista will do this again with my new drivers on it :/