Subject: No sound and lost volume control icon Note-- if someone knows of a more comprehensive list of instructions on fixing sound issues I would be interested in seeing that. Thanks. Tom originally posted these steps for fixing sound card issues awhile back. I have added a few steps after these steps and comments after these steps... ***** Please follow the below steps to resolve sound problems: The first step is to reboot into Safe Mode: Click on Start Choose Shutdown From the Shutdown Menu select Restart and click OK As your computer reboots repeatedly tap the F8 key on your keyboard (once per second) until a Startup menu is displayed Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to choose item #3 Safe Mode Press Enter on your keyboard. The next step is to remove Multimedia from Windows Setup: Click on Start-Settings-Control Panel Double-click on Add/Remove Programs Choose the Windows Setup Tab across the top of the window In the list of installed components uncheck Multimedia Click Apply and once the files are uninstalled click OK Close the Control Panel The next step is to remove the media resources keys from the registry: Click on Start-Run In the "Open" box type "REGEDIT" minus the quotes, click OK IMPORTANT "Backup the Registry": Click on the registry menu then click on export registry from the drop down menu. This will open a new box click on the down arrow beside Save in and select Local Disk (C:) In the File Name box type "backup.reg" minus the quotes Make sure under the Export Range that the radio button is beside ALL Click on save Click on the plus sign beside Hkey_Local_Machine Click on the plus sign beside System Click on the plus sign beside CurrentControlSet Click on the plus sign beside Control Click on the plus sign beside MediaResources Click once on the yellow folder beside Aux and press delete on your keyboard Click Yes to confirm key delete Click once on the yellow folder beside Midi and press delete on your keyboard Click Yes to confirm key delete Click once on the yellow folder beside Mixer and press delete on your keyboard Click Yes to confirm key delete Click once on the yellow folder beside Wave and press delete on your keyboard Click Yes to confirm key delete The next step is to remove and reinstall the sound drivers: Right-click on My Computer and choose properties Click on the Device Manger tab across the top of the System Properties window Click on the plus sign beside Sound, Video, and Game Controllers Remove all items under this category by selecting the desired item and clicking remove Note: You will have to click the plus sign beside Sound, Video, and Game Controllers again to re-open the category Once all items have been removes and Sound, Video, and Game Controllers no longer appears in the list click Close Reinstall the Sound Card Drivers When it has finished installing close all windows Click Start-Shutdown Choose Restart and Click OK The next step is to reinstall all multimedia components: As windows reboots it will redetect the sound card and partially reinstall multimedia components Click on Start-Settings-Control Panel Double-click on Add/Remove Programs Choose the Windows Setup Tab across the top of the window In the list of installed components uncheck Multimedia then recheck it Click Apply and once the files are installed click OK Close the Control Panel ***** Thanks Tom.. I did everything Tom said to do, although he forgot to mention to restart before installing the drivers. You probably won't be able to install them from safe-mode. At the point that he says to install the drivers... 1. Shut down the computer. 2. Pull out the sound card. 3. Boot the computer normally. Note -- it will take a bit to boot and will be slow. 4. Shut-down the computer after fully booted with tray icons. 5. Put sound card back in. 6. Boot up, click cancel when it detects the sound card. If yours automatically detects you may have to remove the .inf files for the sound card from your C:\windows\inf folder and repeat this whole process, OR.. maybe the auto-detect installs the drivers correctly for you...? (good luck) 7. Once to desktop, install your sound drivers as usual. I have a EP0X motherboard with an AOpen Cobra AW-840 card. But this will likely work in a lot of situations. I was searching for an answer by "No Playback Device", which I was finding in Sound in the Control Panel on Windows ME. (I mention this for search engines.) It may be the case that simply removing your sound card drivers, shutdown, remove your physical sound card, boot, shutdown, reinstall sound card, boot, install drivers may do the trick. The theory has to do with Windows detecting that there is NO sound card, removing all related OS software on the extra boot there, then when you boot again it detects the sound card and when it installs it puts everything in the correct place. note that in the case of the EP0X board I disabled the on-board sound, and was installing a sound-card. (on-board = bad, uses cpu power) Other things to consider -- Remove extra software that is installed with your sound card before starting at the top. In my case I had some weird sound software that came with my sound card that I could not successfully remove, so I went into Program Files, and renamed the folder that the software resides in before starting this process. (I rebooted once to make sure it didn't disable the system.) Regards and Hope This Helps, Roger

How do I reinstall a soundcard if Windows XP is my operating system? I couldn't find a lot of things in windows XP that matches the instructions.