Sound (Avance Logic ALS4000) has been working fine in WinXP for about 3 months. Then al of a sudden, while watching an avi-clip in Mediaplayer with my headphones plugged in, the movie hanged and the sound turned in to loud squeaking and cracking noises. Had to reboot XP (first time ever) and when it rebooted sound was gone! Not only in the headphones but also the speakers. Have reinstalled different versions of drivers, deleted and reinstalled, returned to previus system-backup. Nothing seems to help... Computer now even uses PC-speaker sounds while system says that sound-controllers are all working just fine. I don't know what to do. Please help ...

HOW TO: Resources for Troubleshooting Sound Problems in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q307918

Troubleshooters haven't been really helpfull, sorry. I've tried all the standard procedures (re-installing, deleting, installing older drivers, using standard winXP-drivers) , nothing helped. The strange thing is that my video-playback also now seems choppy. Avi-clips seem to hang every 5 seconds or so. Would these problems be related? I'm sure the sound problem isn't the speakers: headphones don't make a difference. I don't think it's the connector either: when I switch on or off the '3D Stereo'-option in the volume-settings, I can here a clicking sound in the speakers. I'm afraid it is probably a hardware problem. Don't understand how a sound card can 'break' al of a sudden, I suppose I just had bad luck (again) with this peace of hardware ... Suggestions are still welcome though!