No sound? Weird...

After "repairing" my Windows XP Home Edition and reinstalling the sound drivers, this problem persists.

There is no sound, and the little speaker icon doesn't even show up in the taskbar. What to do?

 

Here's a couple things to check:
Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services
Scroll down the list of services until you find the Windows Audio service.
Right click on it and choose Properties.
Make sure it is set to Automatic and Start is checked.


Also go to Sounds and Audio in the Control Panel. Under the Volume tab, make sure the box is checked for "Place the Volume icon in the task bar"

 

"windows audio" was already up and running, and set to start at boot

under "sounds and audio devices", it reports that there is no audio device

 

Have you checked your device manager?

 

Hi,
I've had the same thing happen on a couple different computers. What worked for me was to go into the control panel, click on sound and audio, click on hardware, highlight the Realtek AC 97, click properties, then click driver and lastly click on Roll Back Driver. Hope it fixes your problem!
Lauren

 

ok, i uninstalled the new driver and installed the old version that came on my mobo cd, everything works

thanks!

(i think thats the last of my pc problems...everthing finally is stable and works again! yay!)

 

Wonderful! Glad it worked for you too!

 

speculant, now what you want to do is get a program that collects all the non-MS drivers your computer is currently using and saves them to folders. Burn the folders to a CD so if you need to reinstall and something isn't working, you pop in the CD and point the install to the CD so it grabs the correct driver.

 

could you provide an example of a program that does this?

 

WinDrivers backup
http://www.realfreedownload.com/WinDriversBackup+Personal+Edition

If the download link sends you to a place with a paid program, send me a personal message here and I will provide a link to the last FREE version. it is the one I use to backup all the drivers on my windows computers for archiving.