Shuttle Support Posted May 3, 2005 at 7:17 pm

My audio problems continue to persist after a couple weeks of working with the SN25P. As a result, I’ve recently stepped up my efforts to contact Shuttle support. I’m now satisfied with their response, but not overly impressed. A couple of my e-mails sent through from the Shuttle site went unanswered and I found that their phone system unintuitively drops you into a menu system if a tech doesn’t answer your call quickly enough. On the other hand, I found the Shuttle staff to be personable and reasonably helpful when I actually did get through to real people.

I’ve now affirmed my suspicions that my audio problems with the SN25P are related to a faulty onboard audio chip. To recap, I’ve seen Windows XP consistently hang when trying to initialize the VIA Envy24PT chip with the proper driver. Looking at the behavior, I can only guess that Windows polls the chip and spins while waiting for a response that it never receives.

At this point, I basically have two options: seek a return from the point of purchase (Newegg), or seek an RMA from Shuttle. Newegg lists the SN25P as a manufacturer-warranted part so a return does not seem to be an option. Luckily, an e-mail with an RMA number from Shuttle landed in my inbox as I was finishing this post.