Nothing in Device Manager

Hi all. I am new here and need some help. I went away on holiday leaving my computer looked after by a friend. When I got back, I turned it on and the whole look of my computer desktop had changed. The task bar was a different colour, it used to be a lovely dark blue colour and now it's an ugly grey colour and some of my icons were missing from it. After messing around in Help and Support, I was led to the Device Manager, but everything was missing from it. There was nothing in it. I had also lost my internet connection as there was nothing listed the Internet conections menu.

I then hired a technician to come and fix it. He decided a restore was the best avenue to take, but when he tried, he was taken straight to the Bios Code, which he said had been changed. I don't know anything about a Bios Code and have never seen it before so I know I did'nt change it. He then decided that the only other thing he could think of was to upgrade me from Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional. This did get my internet connection back. He reinstalled my drivers and updated them.

Then the real fun began. I had no sound in any of my programs. The colour scheme was still wrong. Everything was still not looking right. To fix the sound problem, he installed a new Soundcard, but that didnt fix it. He then removed the battery on the motherboard and put it back in after 20 minutes to see if that would help, but it did'nt. Instead it sent the look of the computer back to Windows 98 even though I have XP Professional. The clock was reading the wrong time and had gone back to 2003. I have no options to change the colour and look of my desktop taskbar and put it back to the colour I had. And I still have no sound. The amazing thing is though, I can still copy my music files to a cd and listen to the music on my stereo player, I just can't listen to them on the computer. He then sugested uninstalling all the programmes I use the sound for and re-installing them. We got as far as my CD Burner, which is an external one, but it won't uninstall. The computer keeps freezing. The burner also won't close a disc properly and I have to cancel that part to get the disc out.

My technician is thoroughly fed up with my computer and has suggested I buy a new one. That's ok for someone earning $60 an hour and he did'nt even fix it. All I want is someone to tell me what happened, how I get my sound back, and make my computer look like it did before.

By the way, before he left he removed his Windows XP Pro and put my XP Home back in.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The theme was most likely changed from XP Blue to XP silver. Right click the desktop and click properties. Color changes and the like are in there. Or you can type themes.exe in the Start/Run command. The rest of your problems sound very fishy. Did you ask your "friend" what the heck happened?

 

If Device Manager is blank, your Plug and Play service has been disabled...

 

There are no themes in the Start/Run menu. When I right click on desktop to bring up properties,the only option I have is Windows Classic and nothing else. My technician tried to put the colour scheme back, but could'nt.

Any other ideas?

 

I don't think you need to buy a new computer ... just sounds like your windows install is too corrupt to be usable as your friend probably tinkered with the "insides" of windows without knowing what he was doing

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

try doing a repair install of winXP, with the above guide, just skip down to the red bar and ignore the stuff he says about virus' .. you might google repair install windows XP if that tut isn't enough for you

though you will have to reapply the service packs and updates ..and reinstall your programs, desktop shortcuts, settings etc ... BUT you will retain all your files ... but you may want to back them up just in case

you might choose to do a full reinstall as that would clean out all the crap left by your friend ... but you would need to back all your files up before hand as that would destroy all the data on your computer and it sounds like you can't do that

then never let your friend ever use your computer again

 

The themes service probably isnt running either...

My posts are showing up here, right?

While reinstalling may be the only option, shouldn't you check to see if your services have been disabled first?

 

I'll state the obvious are your speakers plugged in to your new soundcard,are they plugged into the right socket,the headphone socket will do,do your speakers have power or does your monitor have speakers make sure that is plugged into the soundcard,does your motherboard have onboard sound try enabling and disabling it in bios,try plugging your speakers into the onboard soundcard,

Go into volume control make sure none are muted and are up full,if its just cd's you cant listen to connect the cable from your cdrom to your soundcard.

And next time tell your friend there is no porn on your computer.

 

To the original poster;

Check and see if everything is enabled under msconfig, especially under services.

So far I can see at least these services arent started:


Windows Audio
Plug and Play
Themes

 

Once you've done all that, look for another "technician", preferably someone who actually knows what they are doing.

 

Thankyou all soooooooooooooooo much but especially to Adynalyne, as thats exactly what was wrong. I can't believe a technician could get it so wrong, but then again, where there's money to be made maybe I can. I absolutely love this site. I am a member at another site and this one was highly recommended to me by some of the members. Now I see why.

Once again.....Thankyou

Tuumeke

 

Glad to see that all got worked out!

There are a lot of posers out there, unfortunately.