Rebuilt my studio - Both of my soundcards seems dead

[mantrix]

I have Emu 1820M as well as Creamware Scope.

During two days i have rebuilt my studio, cleaned up the cablemess and installed two Ensoniq DP2 & DP4 effects with balanced cables to each soundcard. I also used "electronic airspray" to clean the backside of my computer as well as the connectors of the soundcard.

When i finally powered up my computer, with all outboard gear like the Ensoniq effects shut off, patchmix is not there, when i open patchmix it says nothing is connected not even the PCI card!!! And i have not even opened the computer case during my rebuilding of the studio.
Also, the Creamware software tells me the same thing, no hardware is found...

What have happened here? Have both soundcard gone dead in a second, why and how? I have had EVERYTHING unplugged during the rebuild of the studio.

Please help me someone because im in a state of panic!

[Neutron]

chances are very slim both sound cards have died. maybe they just got bumped and need to be re-seated.
just open up the computer and take them out and put them back in again.

is there any other PCI card or device, and is that working fine?

[mantrix]

A reseating is a little tricky as my creamware card is !!SUPERGLUED!! unto the chassi.. Im actually not an idiot (perhaps a small one), but the card fitted so horribly bad so the only way to make sure it would not be able to pop out from the PCI connectors was to force it to the chassi by superglue..

Now things look brighter because i removed my Emu 1820M soundcard wich also my computer cant find at all, and tried it in another computer.. And it works! The other computer finds it instantly..

That should rule out that the creamware card is dead also, this seems to either be a question about the motherboard or windows??

Do you still think a "reseating" would fix the problem? Then why oh why did i superglue it..

[mantrix]

So what would be the reason a reseating of the card is needed? I havent moved anything in the computer during the rebuild of my studio, and when i noticed the problem i opened up to check that both cards were firmly inserted into PCI slots as they were also..

So my motherboard only has two PCI slots, one with superglued Creamware Scope and one with Emu 1820m. Is there an easy way to make sure reseating is what is needed here? Because it might be a tough job getting the Scope card out...

[Neutron]

So what would be the reason a reseating of the card is needed? I havent moved anything in the computer during the rebuild of my studio, and when i noticed the problem i opened up to check that both cards were firmly inserted into PCI slots as they were also..

So my motherboard only has two PCI slots, one with superglued Creamware Scope and one with Emu 1820m. Is there an easy way to make sure reseating is what is needed here? Because it might be a tough job getting the Scope card out...

superglued your card..ummmm..ok

what did you plan to do if your motherboard got a blown capacitor or something?. if the PCI bus has fried then its the motherboard chipset.

anyways, do you have some old card you can put in that pci slot and see if it gets detected?
and change device manager to "show hidden devices" to see if theres any problem PCI related motherboard chips.

whats the only thing you changed? it was blowing compressed air on the computer.

not very likely, but compressed air could blow a small metalic object, scraping, wire or screw and short out some pins on a tiny chip. maybe just blow it again most things like that do not die from being shorted out. unless you are unlucky and it was a power pin.
if you live in a very dry place or (do you ever get zapped by static when walking about?) the compressed air can build a charge and zap things.

[Pete]

Acetone solvent is what they say to use, on the superglue site, to remove superglue.
It's strong stuff - evaporates real fast, and will dissolve lots of things. Like the surface finish of your pc boards, a little.

[mantrix]

Hello.. Problem solved. It was just the case of me being an idiot.
Just because i had superglued the card i never bothered to check
close how good it was connected. Since it was superglued, no need right?
Well the problem was just that the Creamware card had popped out,
a little push back and problem solved.

Supergluing a card might seem strange, but at the moment when i bought
the card it was the only way for me to actually get it to stick to the PCI port.
The form of the card was strange, as i could never get it stuck using a screw.
Also, its not superglued to the motherboard, only to the chassi. A little violence
would be enough to get it out, the superglue is seldom as super as one wishes it to be.