Thing was that if i checked windows's playback devices my "speakers" device was gone, but it still detcted the card's "S/PDIF" device. So i wanted to check what was up in the driver's console. That just gave me an error of "The audio device supported by this application is not detected", I got scared thinking "oh crap it's finally gone? but i loved that card!".
So i googled around and found some people with a similar problem... One guy said he fixed it by reinstalling the drivers from the CD, so i did that (nothing worked)
But then i figured "ok so what if i uninstall the drivers and then reinstall them?" so i went to my computer's devices thing, found the soundcard, right clicked it and clicked uninstall, then ticked the "delete driver software..." thing, pressed ok, rebooted and all of a sudden my sound works again!
I thought i just deleted the drivers, but guess that there was something funky going on :I
So if anyone has the same problem and chances upon this via google, then try this out.
Now then, to finish up what i was doing yesterday....
Step 1: finish setting up my laptop, although it seems to sort-of reject linux so this may have all been for nothing :(
To do this i need to do a slight modification to the alsa configuration so it detects the laptop's subwoofer and uses it properly, i've done this in the past but i don't remember how.
Next i would have to configure openbox (that's the WM i use) to properly make use of the laptops media buttons (volume buttons in particular)
Then after that it comes down to setting up a virtual machine that uses the physical windows installation.
Then there will be the moment of truth where i make that virtual machine work (or ultimately fail... again...)
And upon sucess i will either wrap things up by installing a login screen (i don't remember what they called it, but these things have a ridiculous name that doesn't even imply their functionality)
And then i can say i'm finished with the laptop... OH but i bettered not forget to install the firewall on it too, that'd be a shame wouldn't it?
...
My computer froze, so a lot of text i'd written here got chopped off, the virtual machine using physical hard drive thing didn't work out in the end, i couldn't get it to work. I am considering just biting the bullet and using skype 4.0. It's not so terrible, i like having separate windows kinda.
Actually it all depends on one thing, can i make a chat not alert me unless specific words are said or not alert me at all? usually you can do this with a menu setting in skype 5+ but in here all we have is a command, and i don't know if it's program-wide or chat wide... wait... i'll just test it...
It worked, now it's a question of if i'll have to set it everytime i start skype or if the setting will stick :I
Yeah i can live with this i guess, who the hell needs windows?
Now i just need to configure the speakers and set up a few things and i can say my laptop is finally set up.
Namely these things include
Configure alsa till i'm satisfied with the speaker's output. (Get the beats audio speaker working...)
OpenBox key-bindings
Configure tint2 a bit
Install some pointless eyecandy stuff (like conky... Ok, not pointless! this laptop has a history of overheating)
More pointless eyecandy like cursors
Configure & install fonts... and certain other things (like screen-blanking timer/screensaver and whatnot)
Install a login manager (more pointless eyecandy, logging in and typing startx is easy enough...)
Install a file manager (thunar i guess)
Configure the touchpad (fucking hate palm clicks)
And finally:
Find an alternative to my dictionary program (this could turn out to be difficult, if i can't find one i'll set up a windows XP virtual machine just for this purpose, which means i could just as well set up skype 6 on that)
...
...
Wine could run it? :O It must be able to run it! that thing is windows 98 kind of old! i must try! (chances are the dictionary will run better in wine than it does on windows 7! lol)
This'll be my checklist
This is a mountain of just "details" work. It's that annoying thing no one wants to do (initial setup) if you use windows, the easy way is to use Ninite which can install almost everything you could possibly want to have installed on your computer for you. (check it out, it's cool).
Well, at least i've done some of the most annoying technical detail work already which took me some time to figure out (in the past) which includes disabling switchable graphics on startup (it caused overheating) and disable wake-on lan on startup too (if i don't the ethernet LED will be left on when i turn off the computer.)
Lets see, i'm crossing out that list pretty fast, i'm tackling the easy tasks first which is mostly installing stuff, what i dread is openbox keybindings and alsa... this is all pretty straightforward, writing down a list like this certainly helps!
Urgh i fucked my windows installation, now i have to reinstall that too D: not that that's a problem lol. I wanted to use it to do some testing on this speaker here, since the subwoofer is placed right underneath the other speakers i can't tell if it's on or not unless i can hear the difference of when its on and when it's off only way for me to do that would be to test individual channels (which won't work, since this is 2.1 and 2.1 is only 2.0 + sound forwarded to subwoofer too, it's not actually 3 channels) or to hear the sound of the same file played with it on and off.
Why is this speaker important? why voice chat of course! i've got a method which i think could have worked turning on the subwoofer, but i can't tell for sure since it requires me to restart to test it. Since i need to restart anyways i know that the speaker is on if i'm in windows so i can just compare the sound between the two. I'll have this windows installed as backup if something goes wrong in linux. Linux is a lot more prone to error than it's users ever want to admit (i've had more crashes in linux over a year than i've had in windows for 10 years)
Unless you use the LTS kernel and don't toy with any settings then this shit is nowhere near as stable as people claim.
I installed windows again, turns out i didn't get it working in linux yet damnit. This might become a slight problem. But whenever i use windows on the laptop now it's a MUCH cleaner installation than what i used to have (sheesh, i used to have a trashy desktop half full of icons and loads of pointless programs i didn't need. Much simpler now, now i only have what i really use installed)
There's another secret reason why i installed windows, and that is the fonts, i can use windows' fonts in linux on the condition that i have a copy of them, of course i could've pirated it from somewhere, but that'd be no fun right? (Besides, it's good to have a backup OS if things fail in linux)
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