I accidently forced a 2000/XP driver onto my ME system. At startup, I got a protection error, so I deleted all the registry entries I could find and the sound card entry from the device manager in safe mode. Since then nothing can find the audio device even though it's in the device manager and says its working fine. All my audio programs say they can't find it or it's already in use. I tried reinstalling the correct drivers but none of them seem to work, and many of them say they don't detect a sound card. I've tried everything, reinstalled windows, many different drivers, reinstalled the sound card in a new slot, even went out and bought a different sound card which has the same problems. I started out with a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit and now have a Sound Blaster Audigy. Winamp gives me some error message about how the device ID used is out of the range of the system. The problem is in windows because the sound works fine on my XP boot of the system. PLEASE HELP.

Use system restore. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsME/using/computerhealth/articles/systemrestore.asp

i don't seem to have a restore point before this incident.

http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/46053.html See Nick Ritche's response at above site.