Sound Problem

A friend recently gave me his old computer. It is a Compaq Pres. 5000 series. The OS (WinMe) was totally messed up (his kids got to it ) so I decided to reformat it. Then he tells me that all the disks were gone. So I decide to reformat using my old Win98 SE installation disk. Everything goes fine it starts asking for a bunch of driver files. I contacted HP (owns Compaq now) & they direct me to download their video & audio drivers (which I did). I transfered the files over to the Compaq & installed the drivers.
The video driver installed without a hitch; the audio driver also installed but I have no sound. I contacted HP again & they told me to uninstall & reinstall the driver (which I did) but still no sound.

The symptoms include:
1) There is no speaker (volume control) next to the clock
2) In Control Panel - Multimedia - Multimedia Properties - Audio Tab
all the dropdowns & buttons are greyed out
3)In the Device Manager under the Sound, video & game controllers are :
-ESS Allegro PCI Audio (WDM)
-Gameport Joystick
-MPU-401 Compatable
There are no conflicts shown (no ?s)

I contacted HP again but they said since I reformated with a non-HP product it wasnt their problem, it was a windows problem.
(Funny how that works... eh ?)

Should I just give up & buy a cheap sound card ? Will that fix the problem ?

Any help would be highly appreciated (or maybe, if nothing else works, I could borrow a bigass sledgehammer )

Thanks,
Lynx560

 

I still havent figured out how to fix this.
Please help !!!

 

Just wanted to let you know I figured out the problem with help from another forum. It would of been nice for at least one of you to give my problem a shot. I am really disappointed.

Obviously I wont be coming back here if I need any advice.

 

Good to hear you got your problem fixed, lynx

You know, it could be that nobody who has been online in the last 3 days and read your posting knew how to help you resolve this specific problem, and seriously, no advice is better than bad advice.

 

I have to agree that no advise is better than bad advise.

With that in mind I have a similar problem with my HP Omnibook 6000. I lost a hard disk to a crash and installed a new one. I formatted with XP Pro and everything was fine for a while. One day I noticed the same situation as the original poster of this thread.

One difference, I tried to fix it by reinstalling drivers, rolling them back and then forward. Then I went to the device manager and discovered that it says everything is fine, but the driver is "not started".

How do I start a driver? So far I found nothing on the web.

 

Check out these links..might give you some ideas to try from people who have resolved this issue...hope they help

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1066427444

http://www.rme-audio.de/english/faq/10entrye.htm