Windows sound issue: no playback devices, drivers good!

[killadude]

Hi, im working on my friend's computer here. i gave it a fresh install of xp sp2 about 3 weeks ago, and the sound was working just dandy, then all of a sudden, the sound stopped working and was replaced by motherboard beeps =P

obviously the first thing to check was the drivers. windows said they were working properly, so i uninstalled the device, and let windows reinstall the drivers. same deal, said they installed fine. looking into the sound properties in control panel, it says "No playback devices" "no recording devices" and "no midi playback devices" all in grey. i figured his onboard audio card had just died, so i brought over my spare sound card, a soundblaster audigy 2, in great condition, which i know works. installed the drivers from creative's website, same exact thing. device manager says "installed and working properly" and sound properties says no devices installed.

i then scheduled a disk scan and restarted the computer, it didnt find any errors. does anyone know whats going on? sounds like a registry problem of sorts. or some obscure windows problem. really dont want to re-reinstall windows, if possible. thanks in advance!

[richjordan255]

try installing SP3

[killadude]

i appreciate the reply but i seriously doubt this is an sp2 specific issue, and even if it were, i do so hate change plus its a server computer so i like to have as few things going for it at possible. we do use it for the occasional game of RA2 though.

[killadude]

desperation bump

[thoughtdisorder]

Have you gone to services and made sure Windows audio is enabled? On rare occasions MS will disable it after updates for what ever reason...

[killadude]

No, i havent. i'll try that. unfortunately i just left his house cause i got fed up with it =P i was just gonna format it and decided i didnt want to deal with that today. thanks for the tip, i'll give that a go!

[Nick259]

Maybe try resetting the BIOS to defaults?

[sneekypeet]

Never did say what mobo your friend has.

I did however have an ABIT that would loose the soundcard quite a bit. I always had to boot another set of ram, then reset the originals and the card would come back!

[killadude]

i checked in the services, that service is still enabled. i tried stopping it and starting it again, to no avail as for the bios settings, i didnt check them, but that doesnt matter for 2 reasons, the first being that if your sound card is disabled in that manner, it doesnt show up in device manager, and secondly, my sound blaster is in a pci slot. that said, ima try that anyway, cause im running out of ideas =P methinks it may just be perma-screwed and im probably gonna have to reinstall but if anyone has any more ideas, feel free to share dems, thanks for the replies!

[thoughtdisorder]

If you haven't yet, maybe try this:

Boot into safe mode and go into device manager. Right click on and uninstall each of the following (If present):
Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Drivers
Media Control Devices
Audio Controller
Video Codecs
and anything else that my be listed under sound devices. Also click on "View", "Show hidden devices" and see if there are any exclamation marks. If so, uninstall them also and then reboot into normal mode. Windows should detect the devices and automatically reinstall them.

I'd try that before reinstalling just for grins. Reinstalling as you know is a pain in the a*s!