Radeon 4850 HDMI sound issues, very irritating!

Im not positive if this belongs here or in hardware, but it seem more like a driver issue than anything, so this is where Im gonna stick it! Move it if it needs to be.

System specs:
Vista 32 bit
AMD dual core 4600 2.4 ghz
2.0 gb RAM
Black Widow 550W power supply
Radeon HD 4850 1gb onboard ram video card
Basic stereo-jack speaker set-up (2 speakers and a small woofer)

So heres the deal, Im about to blow my brains all over the monitor to get this fixed (haha). I bought the new Radeon HD 4850 recently and got it installed without any trouble along with the new power supply. Everything worked great until I realized that I had no sound. Went under sound options, no Realtek on-board sound option or basic speaker option to be found. All that shows under the sound options is a "Digital Output Device HDMI", and it shows to be working. Re-installed drivers and did all my updates. Didnt fix. Decided it might be a broken speaker jack, went and bought USB speakers and no change plugging in through a USB port. Now, under the HDMI option it shows a picture of a TV and the Radeon does support the option to connect an HD tv and run the sound through the tv speakers.

I contacted HP tech support and had the guy take remote control and reinstall Realtek drivers and it still wouldnt pop-up under the sound options menu. I finally yanked the radeon to see if that fixed things and BAM! Sound worked like a charm and all my speaker options are back. Re-installed card, and I was back to square one with the HDMI option and no sound. My only conlusion is that the video card is somehow over-riding my sound options and trying to run the sound through my monitor (which doesnt even HAVE speakers, haha). I tried to deactivate the HDMI sound option and all it did was make my sound inactive. I restarted to see if maybe the options would come after that and they still didnt. Now, before I totally uninstall the hdmi drivers to see if that works (I hate uninstalling unknown drivers without knowing what will actually happen) I was curious if anyone could shed some light on what might be happening to my sound options. Under the Radeon control options I dont see ANYTHING that resembles a sound configuration tool, and I am hoping that maybe there is just something that I am missing.

I have also looked all over online and found this same problem a few times, but no actual SOLUTION. Ozzu hasnt let me down yet, so common guys! Hook me up!

Thanks in advance

Have you installed the latest drivers for your Radeon HD 4850 card? If you haven't please try updating to your latest drivers here:

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catal ... on-vista32

That is the driver for Vista 32 bit. See if that helps.

I have. Tried multiple configurations as well. After you posted the link, I un-installed everything and did a system restore to before installing anything. Windows then automatically downloaded a set of HDMI drivers for sound and I am still left with zero options. I tried installing the ATI Catalyst with AND without the HDMI option and it still doesnt seem to make a difference. Windows is practiaclly DEMANDING that I am trying to pipe all the sound through my monitor and it is infuriating! I have updated my realtek driver over and over and my system still refuses to see anything but this darn HDMI audio option. I have contacted the xFx tech support and am waiting for a response from them. There has got to be a way around this, but I just cant seem to find it.

Anyone got any ideas?

Take a look at these

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... ghthe.aspx

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... lable.aspx

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/72382/

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23738 ... card-sound

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 001AA2IABZ

Awsome,
thanks for the links. Think the third one may be able to help. I will let yall know.

I appreciate all yalls help. Finally got it figured out.

The onboard HDMI sound on the card was just over-riding the auto-detect feature for the motherboard. So instead of seeing the onboard sound selections it ignored them and went straight for the aftermarket sound setup that it saw. I just went into the BIOS and changed the onboard sound option to "Enabled" instead of "auto-detect." Very simple fix and wish I had thought of it sooner. Hope this helps anyone else that ever runs across this problem.