MSI Sound Effect Manager removal

January 11, 2012 · Posted in Windows · Comment 

I’ve personally suffered from MSI’s Sound Effect manager’s weird behavior on Windows 7: the sound effects are on even if they are disabled. Re-installing the drive from Reaktek did not help either. I know the Sound Effect manager is a legacy control panel application, thus it was a possibility this to happen…

Searching on internet did not really help. After suffering almost whole day, I was finally able to fix the problem.

Here’s what I did.

  1. Disable AC97 device from bios.
  2. reboot (naturally)
  3. deleted entries from registry via regedit.exe
    1. (Make sure you make export of appropriate registry section each time.)
    2. download PsTools from Microsoft’s Sysinternals.
    3. run regedit.exe via psexec.exe:
      • psexec -s -i -d c:\windows\regedit.exe
    4. delete following entries in the registory:
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Extended Properties\{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2]
      • “%SystemRoot%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000004
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Extended Properties\{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2]
      • “%SystemRoot%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000004
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\PnpLockdownFiles]
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\drivers\\RTKVAC.SYS”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\SOUNDMAN.EXE”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.WAV”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RTLCPL.EXE”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RTLCPAPI.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkCfg.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkAPO.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkPgExt.dll”=dword:00000005
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
      • “C:\\Windows\\System32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=”RUNASADMIN”
      • [HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3750584346-3454113483-1130964700-1000\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Persisted]
      • “C:\\Windows\\System32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000010
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
      • “SoundMan”=”SOUNDMAN.EXE”
  4. and deleted the files mentioned in the deleted registry values.

After this, restart the computer and re-enable the AC97. Windows should automatically re-configure the sound device.

Good luck!

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