how to reinstall sound card driver in win2000

i lost my sound when my system crashed. sound card was onboard.

i have located and downloaded new dtriver for my sound card.

driver files are zipped and on my desktop.

what do i do, specifically, to try to get this installed? there are a number of files in the zip files, and i'm not sure exaclty what to do?

thanks

 

Alrighty, go to Start, then Settings, then Control Panel, then System, then Hardware, then Device Manager. Down towards the problem it says Sound, Video and Game Controllers. There should be and exclamation point on the left of it. Double click it to expand it and find the thing int he expanded part that has an exclamation point. Double click on it, go to the tab on the top that says Driver, and down on the bottom of it it should say install or update driver. Click on it, say search for a suitable driver, tell it where the driver is, on your desktop, and click next. IT will bring it up and you can click next and it will install. Hope this helps!

 

a few pts of clarification, colin...

1. in the sounds folder, what device am i actually updating driver for? i see legacy audio drivers? that appears to be the oonly sound related device in that folder. others are video etc. also, above the sounds, video etc folder there is a device with a yellow question mark next to it that is called a multimedia audio controller? is that it? i'm concerned that the device i need to update driver for is no longer in my device mgr?

2. what file in the zip file (containing a great deal of files) is actually the driver? there are a number of .dll, .inf etc etc...how do i know which file to point it to?

thanks so much for your help...if i can pull this off, i'd be quite thankful.

 

The multimedia audio device is what you need to update. Is the zip file that you have a self extracting one? If so, it may extract into its own folder. If not, make a folder - WinZip will do this for you if it doesn't exist. Then go to Device Manager and delete this device and reboot. On boot up, a message saying new hardware found will be displayed and ask for a location for the driver. Specify the folder that the files were unzipped to, and you shouldn't have any problems.

 

Novice is right. If you cannot get it done automatically and find yourself doing it manually, choose an ".INF" file for the multimedia audio controller. If more than one .INF file try each one until you get a successful install.

 

ok, i have tried all possible file .inf combinations and for whatever reason, it keeps telling me that "windows cannot locate a driver for this device."

i am almost certain i have the correct driver file?

is there any other reason it would say this, or should i go back to searching for the driver file online somewhere?

thanks