Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

[Intensify]

System is as follows
Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - bios P1.10
Intel 2600k
16gb G.Skill F3-14900CL9-4GBXL
MSI GTX 580 1.5gb (reference)
Samsung 7200.12 (sata3_0, grey)
OCZ vertex 2 60gb (sata3_1, grey) SRT not enabled yet but will be soon following these instructions
silverstone 500w psu (fully modular)
Plantronics gamecon headphones
Windows 7 ultimate 64

Having some problems with the onboard Ethernet basically its pluged in to my router the same way as the computer before it. I am currently using a pci ethernet card as a temporaly replacement.

Onboard sound no output (presumed mic not working either as i cant hear anything). Is it normal for the Realtek HD Audio Manager to have a red speaker?. All the sound is turned up just getting no sound at all.

I have installed the latest drivers from This page. CIR receiver driver ver:20110219 cant be installed as it cant detect a CIR device (not to sure what CIR is but pretty sure i dont have one) I am currently redownloading the drivers to install again for the sound card and ethernet. I have exhausted my self searching for solutions to these problems and finally decided to try for some help here. Very much appriciated for any help thanks in advance.

*edit* might it be a werid bios setting i am missing somewhere? i will get all my bios settings if required and put them here.

[iJoshh]

Re: Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

There is an ethernet driver on the CD included with the mobo that ezmodes the networking issue. If it's not working after that somebody else will have to step in.

I believe there's a sound driver on there as well, I know I've seen people in this forum say there is a bios setting for the audio somewhere, click through the first couple of pages.


Regarding your soon to be SRT, here's a write up I posted on another forum. I've got Windows and my core games/programs installed on one partition of my SSD, and another partition is caching for my HDD. I spent hours googling and all I found was a bunch of people saying that it wasn't possible, but it's pretty cool once you get it set up.

I should preface this post with you must have a motherboard with the Z68 chipset to utilize Rapid Storage Technology.

So I got it working. I've got my SSD caching for my data drive while hosting my operating system and the majority of my programs. It was quite the hassle to get it going but once I figured it out it was easy so I'll post here in case anybody is interested in doing the same thing.

Plug in both your SSD and your data drive. Set your sata configuration to RAID in the bios. Have the Intel RAID drivers handy on a USB flash drive because you'll need them to Install windows. Boot to your Windows disc, "install driver" and it will find the raid driver on your flash drive and install it. Then install Windows to your DATA DRIVE. Once that's up and running download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver + utility. Highlight your data drive (HDD which is currently housing Windows) and choose Accelerate. You'll get a Window asking you if you either want to use 19.8 GBs of your solid state or "the whole SSD" which will actually only use 64 GB, even if it's larger than that. Whatever you don't use will remain untouched for you to use however you choose. I opted to use 19.8 of my "120 gb SSD" which in reality is closer to 110. After you select how much you'll be left to choose "enhanced or maximized," you can google that, I went with enhanced. Reboot, make sure Intel Rapid Storage Technology is running in the bottom right hand corner. Cool. Now we're going to nuke it.

Reboot your machine to the Windows disc once again, again make sure you've got the RAID driver on a USB, install the driver. This time, delete the partition that you just installed Windows to along with the "System Reserve." At this point you should see your empty data drive and an empty whatever you've got left of your SSD that you didn't choose to use for caching. I used 20GB of my 110GB SSD leaving me with a 90GB SSD. Pick your SSD, install Windows. When it's finished, once again download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver + utility, reboot. Open up the utility, you'll notice that the caching partition you previously set up is still caching. Open Windows Disk Management, select your empty data drive (HDD,) and assign it a drive letter (I changed my DVD Rom drive first to free up D:,) quick format it, and you're up and running.

You now have Windows installed on your SSD, and a portion of your SSD caching for your data drive.

[alganonim]

Re: Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

You can't install CIR receiver driver cause your receiver is inactive in UEFI section.

Check if your sound card isn't disabled in UEFI too.

Try to use SSD for OS and to cache another HDD, like iJoshh said, here is better explanation how to do it. I also tried to do it with my OCZ V3 60GB SSD, but every time I selected to choose only 18,6GB cache, Intel SRT took all space - 56GB total capacity of my SSD, so I can't use the rest of my drive for primary OS.

[Intensify]

Re: Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

UEFI ?

you mean the setting in bios under
Advanced --> South bridge
Onboard lan - Enabled
Onboard HD Audio - Enabled

those are the only ones i see and they are all enabled unless there is another werid setting i am missing because these have been enabled from word go

As for the motherboard utility i seem to have missplaced my cd might have lossed it in transit when i moved houses i did a quick search where it should be and was unable to find it. Is there any place where i can download the contense of the cd? might it be the Xfast lan utility on the Asrock website? i installed it but dont see much utility for fixing connections in the program but i only took a quick look.

*edit* thanks for the ssd info sounds a little tricky on his setup with the ssd being partitioned os and cache but could be worth it with the improved speed very iterested in that set up rather than using my full 60gb ssd to cache the hdd.
*edit* the light on the ethiernet port it self dosnt even light up when a cable is pluged into the board. i get a bad feeling about both of these problems :(

*sleep time for me i will keep updating till the problem is solved*

[Intensify]

Re: Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

is there anything else i could try to get this sound/ ethernet working?

[iJoshh]

Re: Asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 - ethernet and sound problems

If you've all ready installed the Broadcom Lan driver ver:14.6.4.2 from ASRock > Products > Motherboard > Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 > Download, and still don't have any lights on your ethernet port when everything is plugged in, then you have a hardware problem. I'd try a different LAN cable just to make sure it's not something goofy like that. If you haven't, then try that stuff and report back.