No Devices in Device Manager

I was going to just flick through the similar threads, but I think my problem's slightly different.

The other day I got home and decided I needed to clean my computer up, so I went ahead and uninstalled about 20gb worth of games. Then I tried to install AVG, and it told me to restart my computer. When I'd restarted, no sound would come out of my speakers. I thought maybe something had disabled it in my volume control, but it wouldn't allow me to look at it. I tried going on Device Manager, and I got nothing at all in there. I thought it was maybe because I'd accidentally let themexp install WhenU onto my computer, so I got rid of it, and ran SpyBot, and let AVG do a complete Anti-Virus, and that produced no solve for the problem.

So I went ahead and reinstalled windows, which worked for a little while. Then it stopped working again. I want through your complete malware removal, and still no sound. I tried going through the BIOS and disabling the soundcard and enabling it, which didn't work. I'm pretty much at the end of my tether!

I'm running a DELL8400 with Windows XP. Thanks for any help in advance.

 

So... you said you had no devices in the device manager, and then you said you fixed it. Does this mean that when the device manager was opened, it was just an empty, blank white window? But now it's not? Or is the only problem now that you have no sound?
Please clarify
(...and welcome to Major Geeks!)

 

Thanks.

I had a blank white window before, then when I reinstalled windows they all came back, and now they've all disappeared again.

 

1. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.

2. Double-click Plug and Play. If you receive a Configuration Manager message, click OK.

3. In the Startup Type list, click Automatic, and then click OK.

4. Close Services.

5. Restart the computer.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311504/en-us