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This one is a challenge.
Yesterday everything was fine until the cable internet went out during a storm. At first there were no problems other than the loss of internet, but then win98 started hanging on shutdown yielding "rundll", then "winoldap" when you pressed ctl-alt-del. Try as I might (msconfig, taskinfo, scandisk, system file check, virus scan, spyware scan, scanreg /restore), I never did find out what was causing that hang, and when I tried to open the printer folder it would hang then too. The sound was fine during all this. Anyway the printer folder hang had me thinking that the device driver database had gotten corrupted. So to rebuild it I deleted hklm /enum and let windows redetect everything. After that the hang went away, opening the printer folder now worked fine again, but now the sound card does not work (avance AC'97 audio on board an ecs k7vta3). Windows detected the card and re-installed the driver no problem. The sound was sharing IRQ 11 with the video card so I moved it to IRQ 7, no change in symptoms. I've tried two driver versions. I do not think the storm took out the sound chip since it did work up until the rebuild of hklm/enum.
When I run dxdiag it says no sound card present, however aida32 correctly detects it. When I click on the volume control the volume control panel does not come up - nothing happens. When I click on an mp3 files I get this message "usupported PCM format". When I click on an avi file the file plays but no sound is produced. Hats off to anyone who can figure it out!

Make sure `all' the volume controls are turned up. I once had a problem with the AC'97 adapter. Had no audio until I accidently turned the volume up on a device that wasn't even being used.

Open multimedia in control panel. Is the sound card shown there as the playback device? Does everything look OK with the sound card in device manager?

"Make sure `all' the volume controls are turned up"
the manual volume knobs are turned up, but there is no way to access the windows volume control. When I click it nothing happens. Which is also what happens when you click it when there is no sound card installed.
"Open multimedia in control panel"
I will try that later when I am back home. Device manager looks perfect, and says the device is working properly.
I'm thinking there is some windows component that needs to be re-installed but I don't know what. I did reinstall directx9.

hope someone is still watching...
- everest and device manager both indicate that the avance AC'97 audio device is present and functioning
- but dxdiag and control panel > multimedia both say there is no audio device present
and the symptoms are still as they are above.
I did try removing and re-installing all windows multimedia functions through > control panel > add/remove programs > windows setup, but no change in symptoms

OK in device manager but not showing in multimedia usually means some undetermined problem with the drivers. I found this on another site:
Go to add/remove programs and remove any sound drivers that are there. Shut down and reboot to safe mode (Before the OS starts to load start tapping the F8 key. Choose safe mode from the menu.) In safe mode, remove the audio devices in device manager. Shutdown and reboot in normal mode and reinstall the drivers.
Another thing to check: Run sysedit and open system.ini. Under the [boot] section there should be a line that reads:
drivers=mmsystem.dll
There may be other items in that line also, but mmsystem.dll needs to be there. If it's not there edit it in.
Another fix is FZWG'S #8 response in this thread:
http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/150700.html

Thanks Dave system.ini looks good and I tried the safe mode process quickly here to no effect during the game but will try it again later since I'm not focussed at the moment ....

Okay I tried everything including another delete of hklm/enum and the symptoms persist. Maybe I'll do a reformat re-install. Got to think about it. Or buy a cheap sound card

The only time I personally had that problem was when I moved a drive to a newer motherboard. The old sound was a Sis chipset and the new one was Intel that used SoundMax. I copied the drive to a spare one so I could experiment without permanently doing damage.
I couldn't find an uninstall for the Sis and tried several things including an over-the-top windows reinstallation. That didn't do it. I did eventually find an uninstall for the Sis hiding in the Temp folder but I don't think that was enough either. I do remember that after an uninstall, deleting vmm32.vxd and an over-the-top reinstallation I finally got it setup properly. (Vmm32.vxd is a file that's created when windows is first installed. So if it's deleted you must reinstall.)
I didn't bring any of that up because it didn't seem to apply in your case since you hadn't changed any of your hardware configuration.
Since device manager is seeing the sound I assumed it was enabled in cmos but you might want to check that too.
But, as you say, an add-on sound card is always an option. Don't spend too much time trying to fix it.

sound is enabled in cmos. I tried removing the driver then disabling it in cmos to make sure the symptoms changed and as you'd guess, windows reported no device found when I tried to install the driver. Then after re-enabling it again in cmos, plug-n-play found it and successfully installed a driver.
I'm betting that its a hardware failure. Ordered a $5 pci sound card online today.

Should have just mailed you a card when I first read this post.
If you have any problems, shoot me an email and I'll get one or two in the mail to you.
Skip

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