gateway m500 - no sound driver support in vista

I recently installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my girlfriends fiancée’s Gateway M500. This process was flawless aside from an annoying sound driver issue. The sound card is a Sigmatel AC97 that only has support for Windows XP. There are no Vista drivers in sight. It seems Sigmatel sold off their audio division and the new owners decided against spending resources developing a Vista driver for the AC97 line.

Here’s how to get it working:

1. Download the Windows XP driver from Gateway here.
2. Extract the files. The files will end up in c:\cabs\9523099\
3. Right click the file Setup and click on properties.
4. Click on the Compatibility tab and allow the program to run in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode.
5. Click OK and allow the program to install.
6. That’s it. You should have your sound card up and running.