Need help with re-installing Windows XP audio sub-system

G

Guest

Background: A little while ago, the audio on my Windows XP Pro SP2 system
stopped working. I was using the on-board audio card and never had a problem
before. Then, the audio device just wasn't recognized by windows anymore.
When I went to the "Sounds and Audio Devices Properties" window from the
Control Panel, it would tell me that no audio device was detected. Looking
in the Device Manager, however, under the "Sound, Video and Game Controllers"
section, all drivers were installed properly, with no IRQ conflicts, and no
yellow exclamation points on any of the sound devices or codecs. I also
verified that my speakers were working on another system, obviously, and
ensured that the audio card was enabled in my motherboard's BIOS. I
downloaded the latest drivers for my motherboard (and on-board audio card),
uninstalled and successfully re-installed those drivers multiple times.
Still no sound! I even went out and bought a new PCI audio card, installed
it, downloaded and installed the latest drivers for it. STILL no luck. This
is when I really began to scratch my head.

Next, I tried a to do a non-destructive "Repair" of Windows using that
option from the Windows XP setup CD. I got errors doing that , and I gave up
after several attempts. Finally, on a cloned backup hard drive, I
re-installed Windows completely. Lo and behold, the audio worked fine!

This leads me to believe that some part of the Windows XP audio "sub-system"
on my old hard drive is corrupt or has corrupted files. Does that make sense?

So that I don't have to start from scratch with a fresh XP installation and
re-install all my apps, I would like to be able to just re-install the audio
sub-system of Windows XP on my old hard drive. Is this possible?

Is there just a list of DLLs that I can extract from the Windows XP setup CD
and overwrite? If so, what is that list? What services will I need to stop
in order to do this? Will I need to re-register any DLLs?

Help in this matter would be GREATLY appreciated.
 

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