Adding memory makes my audio hardware vanish!

[furtive]

Ok, this is odd.

I have an EQS RS690MKM AB1S motherboard in my Media PC which had 2 x 1Gb DDR2 800Mhz Corsair memory sticks in it (CM2X1024-6400C4) and everything worked fine, but I have Windows 7 64-bit installed, so it ran a bit slowly.

So I ordered a pair of 2Gb Ballistix DDR2 800 CL4 from Crucial.

Initially I put them in the spare 2 slots to give me a total of 6Gb or memory, but when I booted into Windows my audio hardware had vanished from Device Manager. So I removed the old Corsair memory thinking maybe there was some sort of conflict between the two types of memory, but my audio hardware was still missing.

If I remove the Ballistix memory and stick the Corsiar memory back in, my audio hardware magically reappears.

Any idea what the hell is going on?

[furtive]

Onboard sound - no room for a soundcard in the machine as it's a slimline chassis and has got a TV card in it.

Interesting I hadn't considered it could be a driver issue. I'll try removing one of the sticks and see if that fixes the problem, and will look for updated drivers

[furtive]

Took one of the memory sticks out and the audio hardware came back. I've emailed Realtek and they have send me a diagnostic tool to run and send the results back to them

[furtive]

Except it won't run because the first thing it does it try and find the audio hardware, which it can't find

[furtive]

Would I still be able to pass the audio to my amp via the HDMI port on my motherboard with a USB sound card?

[furtive]

May as well just replace the motherboard with something that works

[furtive]

That would look lovely in my living room

It's not a micro system. It's a proper media PC in a slimline living room friendly chassis. It's just based on an old motherboard now.