Hey Guys, Ok, so when I first built my z70va my speakers worked fine. No red light, audio would mute when putting headphone jack in the SPDIF output, nothing was an issue. Reinstalled my operating system, couldn't find my orginial ASUS driver disks. Downloaded all the drivers off of the ASUS website....first thing I noticed...strange red light, and next...speakers won't mute when I put in headphones. This tells me this is not a hardware issue, this is a driver issue. Nothing, NOTHING, changed except I reinstalled windows and drivers after deleting my partition and reformating my C drive. So....what type of driver change or software change between install number 1 and install number 2 would cause the red light to come on and the audio, or the sound (tying to include all different descriptions so this thread will get more hits on Google) to not mute, or not turn off, when I plug into the SPDIF??
-phatsew

I just use the audio drivers on Realtek's site... No problem here (knock on wood).

I think this is coincidence. Mines on it's way back from ASUS and they had to replace some part on my laptop because of this issue. I think ASUS would know if it's hardware or software related. If you find a quick driver fix I'd appreciate it.

Do you know which driver you used? There are a few that could possibly work...

I just use whatever the latest ones are... those work fine.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...Audio%20CODECs

I am going to Re re-install windows today and see if the problem goes away. I will let you know what happens.

How long where did you have to wait on your Laptop to be serviced?

well I sent it back to my reseller and they had to overnight it in to ASUS. They did not repair the board themselves so the turnaround time depends on ASUS not my reseller. I'll be getting it back on thursday so a total of 3 weeks.

Yes unfortunately "most" resellers will not do motherboard lever repairs. It all depends who you buy from and if they actually overnight it there. I would ask for that overnight tracking number if i were you.

Well, I deleted my partion, reformated my hd, reinstalled windows xp pro, and the VERY first thing i did was install the current RealTek driver from there website, it is version 1.31. During the install of the driver, the ominous light came on, and so I put a pair of headphones in the SPDIF jack fearing the worse....sure enough, sound out both the speakers and the headphones. No other driver...period was present. So...the only test left to try is to install audio driver from my orginal ASUS disk...which I have lost of course. If the sound works with that, then it was a driver error. The RealTEK driver for this system has been recently updated for some MS security thing. Does anybody have the driver from the disk I could d/l directly and try again?
Otherwise, this is the weirdest coincidence in the world. Why would it work until I reinstall my operating system and then crap out when all I changed was the location from which I got my drivers.....weird.

It has nothing to do with the driver. if you are experiencing what is described above contact your dealer and tell them to change your audio board.

So, I have conceeded the fact this is probably a weird hardware failure coincidence that accompanied my o/s reinstall. Asus sent me a new board. (I am my own reseller/bulider) However, I don't know how to get down to the sound card level of the mother board on a laptop. Does anyone have experience with the M6V or the z70va motherboard and what steps need to be taken to uncover the old sound card??
tia

Sorry this came late. I have the ASUS guide on how to completely disassemble the M6VA/Z70VA. It has step by step photos and comes as a PDF file.. so if anyone wants to host it, that would be great for future reference here for other members.

hey, got my laptop back and everything was working fine for 3 days. yes 3 days. booted up this morning and red light is on. Speakers do not turn off with headphones installed. I don't know what to do now. Last time it took 3 weeks . Can't afford to be without it for 3 weeks. Even if I replace again I feel like its only a matter of time before it breaks again.

I went the same route as phatsew, through Asus, doing the replacement myself. It was a better customer service experience than I expected. The disassembly requires patience and attention to detail, and might not be for everyone. I do have a copy of the full disassembly pdf, if anyone needs it.

Hi everyone!!! wow I couldn't find the sound driver from the Asus North American site for the Z70VA so I take it they pulled it. I'm guessing here but I am thinking looking at the posts that the driver it's self is physically damaging the optical/headphone jack. Phatsew you should NEVER install ANY drivers until you get the ACPI software installed and working. This is a very important thing and I’m shocked the others helping you that crank out tons of notebooks didn’t make this very important point. ACPI and Intel chipset inf first ALWAYS! I also notice people calling it a strange light, it's not strange it's the SP/DIF out using TOS/link and that's an optical audio bus. What happens with any soundcard jack sensing technology that uses wire as in copper bus is it detects LOAD on the plug and that causes it to switch a software state IE to headphone and turn off speakers. What I do know is for example when mother board venders implement say an ALC850 the various board makers will wire different plugs to the ALC850's I/O and this is vender/board specific. The sound chip ODMs generally have an SDK/API that the board makers use to customize the drivers for their particular sound I/O implementation. What I am guess here is asus configured the driver improperly that leads to damaged jack sensing circuitry due to software issue in the driver. Believe me it's possible to damage hardware with software specially in this case. Now that we know the jack "senses" based on load on the plug we have to understand that headphones very greatly in their impedance and some headphone that have a lot of load could damage the jack sensing circuitry also. Another thing to note is the optical miniplug would not have any wire/copper to created load on the plug for it to jack sense. So I would assume the implementation of the jacksensing would be a combination of a mechanical switch for it to know if it's an optical plug and load sensing for the copper headphone connection. Either way the plug has both mechanical and circuitry to change it's state. From reading here I'm certain it's hardware damage caused by incorrectly configured audio driver and the API/SDK level when asus customized the driver for their implementation. To bring this point home you guys could have noticed that the nVidia NF2 chipset drivers ,of some time ago, right on the download page at nVidia made specific points that the audio driver that’s apart of the chipset drivers has problems with certain boards, specifically they state Chaintech 7NJS isn’t to use audio driver in this package. Hey it uses the right AC’97 ALC850 encoder right! It’s the I/O implementation of it. You ask hey how does the reference driver from realtek work then? Well they do include profiles for specific popular and common hardware I/O implementation that the reference vender driver will work with. Look at the inf file with the driver package with a text editor and you will see it including specific driver settings/reg keys to work with each implementation. They use the hardware ID strings the card/device have on SPD/EPROM on the device to reference the hardware to specific install direction for specific implementation of sound chip. pci\ven_1095&dev_3112&subsys_61121095 is an example for my SiL3112 Looking and reading around here I really believe as a community an ISO for each model notebook with a datestamp on it should be created for each notebook also including directions on installing the device drivers and the sequence to install them. I will have this soon with the help of all you others and have no problem hosting the files as the up/down on my hosting is unlimited.


Justin