I deleted my sound

Hey all, I hope someone can help me. I have a Dell PC and Windows XP. Yesterday, the sound stopped working. I checked all the cords, mute, volume, stuff and it was all ok. Sooo, I went to a troubleshooting guide and followed directions. They told me to:

Go to start
Go to My Computer
View System Information
Go to Hardware
Go to Device manager
Go to Sound, Video and Games Controllers
Double click on the one that has something to do with sound
Disable it
Reboot the computer
When the computer comes back on, it will say to reinstall the hardware
Reinstall

Well, all was good until the reinstall part. The hardware that comes up is "Auto Device on High Definition Audio Bus" which isn't what I deleted. When I try to install it, it says "The hardware was not installed because the wizard cannot find the necessary software".

Now I don't know what to do. I'm not computer savvy (can you tell?) but I'm good at following directions, even when it completely deletes my sound thingie.

Thanks for any help

:wave

 

Did you "delete" the sound device, or just "disable" it . . . when you look in device manager right now, what do you see? A Red X or a yellow exclamation point?

If a red X, you need to right-click on it and re-enable it. If a yellow exclamation point appears, you need to re-install the driver for the sound device.

Go to the Dell support site and find the driver for your model's sound device. If unsure how to install the driver, instructions can be had on the site.

If still no sound, go to "Start" then select "Run" - type in Services.msc and press return. On the list that appears, make sure Windows Audio service is present, started, and set to automatic. If it is not there, post back and we can take care of that.

Post back if you get it squared away and let us know what did the trick. That helps others who might be in the same situation as you.

 

Thanks so much, Spad. It was a yellow exclamation point so I re-installed the driver. It still didn't work. Then I got the bright idea of restoring the computer back to 3 days ago when all was well. Now I have sound!

I'm not sure if it was the re-installed driver or the restoration but the original sound dohickey is back in the device manager.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me!