Hi, A couple of days ago the yellow colored volume icon at the bottom right disappeared from my pc. I was not able to listen to any audio, it said: Cannot play back the audio stream: no audio hardware is available, or the hardware is not responding I tried to reinstall the soundcard drivers, but couldnt find my soundcard details mentioned in the device manager. I refreshed it nothing happened. I reformatted my system (which in any case I had to do) no volume bar and sound...I tried it manually from add new hardware, but it just doesnt detect my sound card, its not that the sound card it not there, I've been using this pc for the past 3 years and listening good music on it. I got some suggestions to run scanreg /fix and did that too, I tried the DOS programs to automatically detect the hardware devices as well, does not... What seems to be the problem with this pc ??? P3 500 MHZ,64 mb ram, Intel 810 chipset (with inbuilt soundcard i guess) The soundcard was named SoundMax Digital Audio prior to all this.. Any suggestions ? Thanks Amit

ummmmmm.......u might wanna check your bios?

First make sure the on-board sound is enabled in cmos. Otherwise, the soundcard drivers should be available at the motherboard manufacturer's site.

Hey DAVEINCAPS, Thanks for the reply, I'm not sure if I know how to do that. What I did after reading your reply was.. Start - Restart - Delete - Standard CMOS Setup (1st option) Once in this menu, I couldnt find the On-Board Sound option. Pls let me know if I went wrong somewhere... Appreciate ure help ! Regards, Amit

It's probably in 'integrated peripherals' if it's an Award bios. Also check 'bios features'.

It is time to get a new sound card.Without the drivers installed, you would get a yellow exclamation mark in the Sytem Properties for an unknown device(the sound card).If you don't see this, the sound card bios does not do its job anymore.Good luck.