Okay, I've been running Windows 7 since January. Actually, January on my old test PC and since early March, my laptop and primary home PC. On the first PC... I call it my "Frankenstein PC"... mostly because it was pieced together with a bunch of PC parts from all over the place... but this is the first that I installed Win beta 7000, installed 7048, then 7057, 2 days later 7068... and just now put 7077 on it. (Been running 7077 on my other 2 since it leaked). This Frankenstien PC has an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe E nForce 2 board with an Athlon XP 3200, 2GB ram, ATI AIW 9800 Pro, and 4 old hardrives. Not on ANY of these builds does the sound work!!! Windows update has downloaded 6 drivers for the nVidia chipset, sound, PCI, SMB, Silicon SI RAID controller, and the Realtek AC97. Device manager says all devices are working properly... no conflicts... but yet, no sound. Yes, speakers are turned on, volume turned up, windows volume up (and not muted). Has anyone else tested with this or a similar nForce2 board and get the same result? I think before the next build I install, I'm going to run vista through it again just to make sure the controller is still working... but I'm pretty sure it was before I even started back in January.
I've had different nForce versions throughout my computing life and all i can say is that i always had trouble getting everything working, lately with vista it was particularly bad. Win 7 works very similar to vista and all i can say is expect no good for your nForce. it might well happen that you never get it working. seriously. its a pain in the backside. I have changed to AMD chipsets because of this.
i also have an onboard sound card in my desktop. and it also uses ac97 from realtek. my 5.1 speaker is producing sound but i cant configure the AC97 software to 5.1 surround. only two speakers are working plus the sub woofer. its the sound effects manager that is not yet compatible with windows 7. i also sent them an email regarding the problem and the only answer i got from them is, that "windows seven is still on the development phase" and on the email it says that they already updated the driver and it should work in windows 7 but when i downloaded it and checked when the code been modified, it shows the same info as to the one i previously downloaded (may 2008) they only changed its file name. my laptop has altec lansing on it and it never faltered, not even once. im not sure whats the matter with realtek, it seems that they dont value their customers needs.
Try to configure your 5.1 rear speakers as side speakers. Mine worked fine that way. I have full 5.1 in Win7/Realtek ALC880.
Yeah, Windows update downloaded all the drivers for it. (There were no unknowns in device manager after running WU. But after installing, and the sound didnt work, I tried them as well. No Go. So now I'm downloading the Realtek DWin7 Driver from 3-26-09. See if that does anything.