can't selet a midi playback device

We noticed midi sounds weren't playing and my volume icon is gone from the
taskbar. I went into control panel and under sounds, audio tab under midi
music playback nothing was selected, so I selected SoundMAX and press apply,
but when I leave and come back, its gone back to nothing selected.

I checked device manager and all the sound devices are supposed running ok,
are any of these not needed:

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
SoundMAX
Video Codecs

So I uninstalled and reinstalled SoundMAX but still can't select the midi
playback device.

So I bought a Creative Soundblaster card, uninstalled SoundMAX, shut down,
installed the card, booted the bios and disabled the sounds on the mother
board, brought up XP SP3, installed the creatvie drivers & sw .. but still
same thing .. can't select the Creative Synth for the midi music playback.

Any ideas what is preventing me from selecting that?