Weird issue on Dell computers.

[Riggswolfe]

This is not related to gaming but we seem to get alot of tech posts in here so I thought I'd toss one out.

At my place of work we have recently gone to an all Dell environment. Roughly 5% of our computers (possibly more that haven't been reported yet) have an odd issue with one symptom that makes me curious.

Some background:
We have 500+ computers
We are setup as a domain using active directory for management
Our primary two computer types are:
Desktop : Optiplex GX620
Laptop : Latitude d620

Four Windows XP services shut down:

Computer Browser
DHCP
Server
Workstation

When these services shut down the systems sound card drivers almost always hose and it grays out all options in the sound applet in the control panel.

We can manually restart the services and reinstall the sound card and it seems to work for awhile.

The big thing we have tried is selecting a check box in the services tabs that tells the services to interact with the desktop, we've also set them to try to restart automatically. The event viewer gives one of those generic MS errors that can be a ton of issues. (I can't think of the specific one right now.) Our workstations have Windows Firewall disabled since we have server firewalls in place. No changes have been made to Network ports or Server configurations.

Any ideas?

[Arthur_Parker]

Optiplex GX620 has 19 critical updates on www.dell.com.  I'd go for sound drivers/motherboard/bios updates, but I'd try searching for the event viewer error message/id on dell's site first.

[Riggswolfe]

We have most of the current updates but I'll double check. We use imagebuilder which is a program where we create an image minus drivers and when they ship the computers it has the most current updates and such on it already.

the event viewer message is a very common one I've seen which when you follow the link says something like "this is an unknown error message, followup errors or information logs may give more details."

[ajax34i]

Sounds like some sort of conflict between the sound card and the network card (both integrated in the motherboard, probably).  New drivers for both, if you can find them, might fix the problem.  If no drivers, right-click -> disable the sound card, see if that fixes it.

[Riggswolfe]

That is actually my thought, the problem is that I work for a state agency that caters to disabled people. And we have at least 50 blind employees who depend on a screen reading program called JAWS to do their work.

[ajax34i]

Well, I would still try to disable the soundcard, maybe on a test lab system, just to see if it prevents the issue from happening again. 

I'd also try to see if the network card uses any different resources when the computer is booted up with the soundcard disabled, versus when it's booted up with everything enabled.  Same for the sound card.  That way you can see if they're fighting for resources.  It's probably not it, but you can check.

In the end you'll probably end up having to buy 50 sound cards (don't get SoundBlaster just in case), and install them on the 50 computers that absolutely need sound.  Then you can disable the on-board card.

[Sky]

Dude, you've got a Dell. Get onsite service and babysit the tech who shows up so they don't fuck anything up.