WinXP/SoundMAX = No Sound

Sony VAIO tower w/ 2 users. User 'A' has sound, user 'b' has no sound and everything in Control Panel>Sounds is pretty much greyed out. I check the device manager, and it shows that SoundMAX integrated audio is installed. I uninstalled it, rebooted, and let WinXP re-install it, but still no sound.... Wierd!!! Any help or suggestions as to how to get the second user's sound working again will be greatly appreciated!!!!

hopperdave2000

 

Does device manager say "Device is working properly" ??

Perhaps it's dead.
Studio T

 

I'm back- I was out of town w/o a PC for a couple days... anyway, both users show the device as active in the device manager. In Control Panel>Sounds, user 'A' is normal, and user 'b' is all grayed out and shows No Device Selected under Playback & Recording hardware. So I removed SoundMAX from the dev. manager in user 'b' (remember user 'b' has no sound) and rebooted, thinking that Windows would reload the driver and all would be well. I was wrong. Now both users have no sound with the same user 'b' symptoms as before: it's listed as working/active in the device manager, but nowhere else. Everything is greyed out in the Control Panel>Sounds section..... any ideas, help, suggestions will be greatly appreciated!!!!

hopperdave2000

 

I know it sounds silly but is the vol control installed and turned up?

Sorry about my previous comment I misread the original post and thought there were two VAIOs not two users. Must keep of the Scotch.

Studio T

 

Yeah- all volumes are up; nothing is muted. The only place that WinXP actually 'sees' any sound hardware is in the device manager. And it says it's working properly. But nowhere else in WinXP does ANY sound hardware show up. Like I said, in Control Panel>Sounds everything is greyed out and it says No Device Selected or No Device Detected or No Device Available (or something like that) and it's greyed out so I can't select a device if I wanted to. I have a couple of ideas I'm going to try out; if they work I'll post the results.... thanx!

hopperdave2000

 

I fixed it! I first reloaded the Intel chipset drivers; that seemed to at least give me sound, but in Control Panel>Sounds, everything was still greyed out and it still said No Device Available. I ran Dial-A-Fix and it came up with a bunch of errors (.dll's that couldn't be registered and the like). Then I did the ol' 'sfc /scannow' on both users. I rebooted. Everything is now OK!!!!

hopperdave2000

 

Pass the Scotch Dave.

Did you really need SFC on both users? I suppose that's stereo for ya.

Studio T