Stump the Techies: nVidia bug, DVI to HDMI, analog soundFollow

Let's play a round of Stump the Techies.

I have a problem. I know the cause. I need a solution.

System:

Aging HP Pavilion, AMD 4000+ x2, 4 gigs of RAM, with a GeForce 9600 GT running on the latest WHQL nVidia drivers. Very recent reinstall of XP x32. This was my main desktop until three months ago, when it was retired with the intention of becoming a media center PC. (I cannibalized my Win7 license from it.)

With the addition of our new 40" LED Samsung television, it has been promoted to that role.

The PC is hooked up to the TV via one of its two DVI ports, with a DVI-to-HDMI cable. It is also hooked up from the sound ports, a standard 5.1 Dolby set from an onboard VIA/Realtek sound chip, with a 3.5 mm to RCA (red/white) splitter, which is then recombined to the television with its own specialized adapter.

The TV informed me that the HDMI 1 port was the one that was capable of recognizing HDMI/DVI, with the special PC Analog sound jack.

Now, here's the kicker. When no nVidia driver is installed on the system, I have sound.

When I install any version of the nVidia driver in the last 100 updates from them, my sound disappears.

This is a very common bug from nVidia and they've tap-danced their way around acknowledging it, because it's a sign that their all-in-one drivers aren't such a great idea.

The video card has no sound capabilities. Its output choices are DVI or DVI, and it's the older DVI technology that doesn't handle sound too. The video card recognizes it has no sound, but the nVidia driver detects an HDMI port on the other end of the cable, and assumes that it's outputting an HDMI signal. It wrests the analog sound away from my poor VIA chip and pipes it along the DVI to HDMI cable, where it is of course lost in the ether because the video card cannot actually produce sound. It is sending a blank signal to the TV.

The only known solution I can find for this is very hardcore, and involves editing the EDID signal the video card detects at a decompiled programming level. I'm no programmer so I'd rather avoid mucking around in those files if I can.

Does anyone know of any alternate solutions that might be a titch easier? The nVidia forums are silent, and I've stumped the chumps at their FAQ so far too.

Edited, May 11th 2011 11:14pm by catwho

I was using the generic Realtek audio drivers. I'll check the specific version and hunt around for one with HD support.