ok i have a feeling my sound is never going to work, so i think i should follow this site's advice and re-install windows..however im not sure if i can find the cd that this computer came with to do that..so is that a big problem, or is there another solution? ...also is reformatting a computer the same as just re-installing windows...or is ur hard drive not wiped out when u re-install windows?? just a thought...thanks

Reinstalling Windows will not format the hard drive. It is not hard to format and reinstall, just make sure that you have you Windows keycode and all of the drivers that you need for your system and all your data is backed up before you format the drive.

The above post assumes that you have a real WinME cd. You did not say you could not find the WinME cd, you said "the cd that this computer came with." If what you have is a recovery cd, then all your data will be lost (and the drive will be formatted and restored to its original state). I assume you tried a pair of headphones to make sure the speakers still work? Did you remove the sound card in device manager and restart to reinstall the sound drivers?

So...all i need to make is a recovery cd..and then use it..and my original drivers will all come back and my sound will work again?..i think im still confused....

No. We are talking about two different things. Right click the MyComputer icon on your desktop. Click Properties on the mouse menu. Then click the Device Manager tab. Look down the list/check the box next to Sound, Video and Game Controllers. Click your sound card to highlight it then click the Remove button. Restart the computer. Windows should detect the sound card and reinstall it. It may prompt you for the correct driver, so have the driver disk ready or download the driver for your soundcard. This should fix the problem. If it does not, check to make sure the speakers still work. Plug them into another audio source, or plug in a pair of headphones to your pc audio jack to see if you hear sound. Restoring your pc from the restore discs should be the last thing you ever do to fix a problem, as you will lose everything and have to reinstall all other programs. Post back if this does not work. There may be a few other things to try.

efabes, there have been many many suggestions on other posts to fix the sound problem. Sue, does Columbia have a Computer Science major? You might ask them if they want to fix your PC as a lab project or for extra credit.

Well Sue there other posible solutions,you may not have original windows me disk but what about the sound card drivers, do you have those? if so you can go to add/remove and remove the audio drivers from there and then reboot, after system reboots it will probably ask for disk with sound drivers on it, then point it to that cd and it will most likely install drivers from there or if you have that disk you could press cancel when it asks for that disk and then you could just reinstall the drivers yourself by double clicking on the setup file on disk or if you don't have that disk you could always search the internet for drivers preferbly on site of whoever made your sound card.