no audio device in vista 32 sp1

he ive recently had to reinstall windows vista 32 bit sp1 on my laptop and hp dv6710ea and have been having audio issues . my hdd died so i reinstalled windows on it at first the audio worked for maybe 10 minutes then stopped at this point i still had audio icon and the eq showed sounds playing but nothing was coming out the speakers . After restsarting the audio icon has a red x and gives the message no audio device is installed also in device manager the " sound and video games controller " section is not there at all . I know alot of people had issues with conexant hd audio and sp1 but my problem is i have the drivers but they wont install as i get the error " could not find the device for this driver" . im thinking its unlikely that it is the audio device its self as it worked up until reinstall and vriefly afer . Any help would be much appreciated ty .