Bizzare Sound problem!

[Jon]

I would really appreciate some ideas here because I am stumped!!

I ma running Windows XP-sp1 with all latest patches. I have a Hercules
Fortissimo II sound card with 609a drivers installed (the latest). These
drivers have not been changed for many many months

Sound suddenly stopped working on my PC. The symptoms are this:

1. Initial "Windows is starting" sound appears as normal when I log on but
then all sound stops working.
2. If you try to play a system sound using the Sound applet in control panel
you get an error about possibly corrupt wav file.
3. If you run a dxdiag then direct sound fails at step 17(play) with error
0x80004005.
4. if I connect to the same PC using remote desktop with sound transferred
to remote machine then there are no errors at step 2 and 3 and the sounds
play fine.
5. There are no errors in device manager
6. Windows Media, Realplayer etc. all appear visually to play fine - no
errors - but no sound is heard.

I have unistalled and reinstalled my sound drivers several times to no
effect.

There is not much else running on this machine - just Mcafee and Zonealarm.
I have recently upgraded to Zonealarm 5 and am not sure if I have listened
to sound on this PC since then, but uninstalling Zonealarm did not help. I
have also recently installed the new Napster, but uninstalling that also did
not help.

I also tried disabling fast user switching (a long shot!) but that also made
no difference!

I have searched MS's KB but found nothing but something about a conflict
with BitFax (or something like that) which I do not have.

I can now think of nothing to do but reinstall Windows which seems extreme.
I would hope the the error messages and the fact that sound works when I log
on, but not afterwards would help.

Any help very verymuch appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Kelly MPV wrote:

Go to Start/Run/Regedit and navigate to this key: HKEY_USERS.

In the right pane, right click the word (Default) and choose Delete.
If anything was listed under Value Data, it will be replaced
immediately to Default settings and your sound should be restored
after a reboot.

If you receive an error box that reads: "Unable to delete all
specified values", click Ok then move on to the next edit listed
below.

Restore System Default Sounds (Line 6)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Fix the Ding.wav File (Line 6)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Hope it helps.

 

[Jon]

Thanks but sadly, no dice.

Tried the reg fixes and they made no difference.

In case it wasn't clear, no sound is working on my PC after the inital XP
login tune. But that inital tune works fine.

Lack of system sounds is a symptom, but no other sound apps (EG. WMP)
generate sound either (although WMP, Realplayer etc.do not generate an error
message and appear to the eye to be working no sound is heard). Sounds do
play remotely if I connect to the same user session via RDP.

Something during the login sequence must be killing sound, but I have tried
disabling everything but core MS services and sound and graphics and I still
had the problem.

All ideas welcome!

Jon

 

[Jon]

Don't worry, sorry for wasting your time, fixed.

After 2 days of hours struggling with this problem I finally went back to
the original CD drivers rather than jumping straight to getting the latest
off the web and all now works.

Its still a mystery what was wrong (other than the drivers were somehow
screwed up) but all is now right with the world!