No Sound after installing COMODO Firewall?

Hi!

After a recent huge bout with some tenacious malware, I installed COMODO Firewall (and some other things, but I think C.F. is the issue).

Now, I can't get any sound out of my system (almost) at all. I've checked every setting I can find and everything is plugged in correctly.

I'm running XP, and a S.B. Audigy2 card, and on the login screen I get the usual login tone, loud and clear as soon as I enter my password, but that's the last sound it will make, period.

I did download the latest release (Apr, '10, I think) for the Audigy driver, but that didn't help.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

-Sam

 

Not sure why Comodo would do that but you might want to try here for a start.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307918

Also, you might want to look at your default sound scheme.

 

A firewall should not have ANY effect on your audio.
What else was installed at the same time?

 

Spyware Terminator at the same time.

 

On rebooting the machine does not make the usual windows noise, but at login that three-tone login chime sounds off loud and clear.

Then silence reigns once Windows is up. No system sounds, no sound files. No error messages, either.

I tried running the Microsoft "FixIT" thing, but it seemed to stall out completely (nothing happened for 10+ minutes anyway).

 

O.k. Ran the FixIt program and it says it found the sound to be muted. (It wasn't, I'd checked that 20 times.) So it declares the problem fixed. Unfortunately sound isn't yet eminating from my computer, so it must be using an alternate definition of "fixed."

Sigh.

 

If you play a music CD, there are no sounds also?

 

Anything else besides Spyware Terminator?
In your first post, you said "some other things." (plural where I went to school).

 

Heh. Plural. Yes. See it was real late when I was trying to work through the list of "what to do to avoid malware" things, so I got a little confused.

I think Spyware Terminator and COMODO Firewall were the only two things I actually installed.

I had checked for updates to Windows and lost a lot of time on that. I was good on the critical updates, but there were some optional ones listed that kept freezing the machine. I got a few blue screen crashes and had to go back to a system restore point twice or three times and then gave up on those.

 

did you check the advanced volume settings in audio properties ? sometimes these settings get knocked down to off for one reason or another,on my wife's machine it happens when a game freezes or crashes ,or try to rollback the audio drivers

 

Yes, pistol. I did look at that, too. Thanks, though.

-Sam

 

There is one thing I forgot. If you run dxdiag it will take you through a series of tests and show any files that might not be correct or missing.

Start> Run and type in “dxdiag”

 

Thanks! I'll do that tonight when I get back home.

-Sam

 

I had my wife run dxdiag. She says it tells her that system.dll is missing, and "ctaud2k.sys has not been digitally signed."

-Sam

 

I would not worry about the unsigned driver. It has been posted that system.dll belongs to .NET but in this thread a person replaced it by downloading and installing the full directx 9.c package.

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/590438-directx-system-dll-missing.html

 

Ok. I'll give that a try.

Thanks!

-Sam

 

Here's the dxdiag log if it is of any use:

 

So, still no sound? When you go to control panel>sound and audio devices and click on the audio tab, is the default device listed as your audigy2 card?

 

I guess I should say Eureka.

I finally got back to Creative's site (it was down for maintenance yesterday) and re-downloaded the Audigy 2 driver latest version. It was even the same filename as I'd d/l'd the day before, but this time when I ran the setup and restarted, I have sound!

(It froze up solid while installing -- but that seems to happen now with every update and installation two or three times.)

So, I guess that does it! Sound is good. Many many thanks again!

-Sam

 

Glad to hear you finally have sound! Persistence does pay.