Audio device

[Chris Brighton]

My PC has suddenly stopped playing decent sounds. it seems
it can still do 90% of Windows' sounds, but in any
application it does not work. in the control panal
==>sound / multimedia, it says there is no adio device. i
have looked in the device manager etc and it says the
sound card is working fine. i have the same set of drivers
i have always had, the PC is almost a year old now. i have
not changed any hardware, and i have not made any software
changes.

before i go in and try to find new drivers etc i decided
to check to see if anyone else had had this problem, and
how they solved it.

Chris Brighton

[Seaver]

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your posting.

According to your post, you encounter partly sound loss problem in Windows
XP.

If I have misunderstood your concern please don't hesitate to let me know.

1. This behavior can occur if your sound card's driver has been corrupt.
Please remove and then reinstall its driver to ensure the component's
integrity:

a. Go to Control Panel => System => Hardware => Device Manager
b. Click to expand the Sound, video and Game controllers branch, right
click the sub option to uninstall all the listed suboptions.
c. Reboot your computer, XP will automatically detect the sound card
device, install its driver according to the further instructions.

2. If the problem still remains, to purify the troubleshooting environment,
please perform a test under Clean Boot:

Clean Boot: This test allows us to isolate any device drivers or programs,
loaded at startup, that may cause abnormal problem like this one.

a. Click Start => Run => Type "msconfig" (without quoting marks), and then
press Enter.
b. In the System Configuration Utility window, check the "Selective
Startup" option.
c. Clear all the options below Selective Startup.
d. Click OK to close the window. Reboot the computer.
e. Try to reproduce the problem to check whether the sound loss problem
still remains.

Note: During the Clean Boot process, system display and Desktop will look
and perform differently compared with Normal Mode. This is only temporary.
You can click Start => Run => msconfig => Check the "Normal Startup"
option to restore the initial computer status.

The further troubleshooting steps of Clean Boot can be referred from the
following KB article:

Q310560 How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q310/5/60.asp

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Seaver Ren

Product Support Services
Microsoft Corporation

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