No Sound, No Joy

[Guest]

I reformatted my computer a couple of days ago becasue certain programs would
not open. I successfully reinstalled XP and all my drivers. I had sound. I
donwloaded SP2 and my sound disappeared. I uninstalled my soundcard software
(soundmax) and re-installed it. Still no sound. I then right clicked on my
computer, manage, device manager, and under system devices I found a yellow
exclamation point next to plug and play soft device enumerator. This device
is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for
this device. (Code 31)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.
I have uninstalled the device, but when I went to re-install it, it could
not be found.
I have been to a number of message boards and I have yet to find an answer.
My sound was working fine before reformatting. My machine is 3 years old and
my sound card is on my mobo. Interestingly enough, my second computer which
was purchased last year is having the exact same problem. Can anyone help me?

 

[Rich Barry]

Take a look at this MSKB Article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your help; however, I do not have any issues with my CD/DVD
drive. i cannot hear any sounds out of my speakers. I just get that static
beep. No volume icon in my sys tray, my soundmax program shows a grayed out
horn icon. As I understand it, that article is for people that can no longer
access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you receive an error message after
you remove a CD recording program or a DVD recording program in Windows XP:
"error code 31"

 

[C J.]

Hi John,

So you have soundmax on your motherboard too. I installed an inexpensive
Creative Labs SB Live 5.1 audio card to get around the issue of Soundmax
failing to work after installing the chipset drivers (soundmax was also
installed) on my Intel board.

You could try reinstalling Soundmax from the CD and see if this fixes your
problem once you've tried everything outlined below:

To install an icon for Sound on the system tray, click on Sounds, speech
and Audio devices in the control panel (if in category view) Click on link
for Sounds and Audio devices. In the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties...
put a hash mark beside"Place a volume icon in the taskbar." click apply.

Next Tab on audio... be sure the default device is Soundmax Digital
Audio... and that it is the same for Sound recording and Midi music
playback. hash mark in Use only default devices. Click apply and ok.

Finally, right click on Volume Icon... open Volume Control... be sure none
of the displayed items contain a hash mark in Mute.

Holler back if your stuck.

 

[Plato]

I reformatted my computer a couple of days ago becasue certain programs would
not open. I successfully reinstalled XP and all my drivers. I had sound. I
donwloaded SP2 and my sound disappeared. I uninstalled my soundcard software
(soundmax) and re-installed it. Still no sound. I then right clicked on my
computer, manage, device manager, and under system devices I found a yellow
exclamation point next to plug and play soft device enumerator. This device
is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for
this device. (Code 31)

Check to see if your sound card maker has SP2 drivers.

 

[Guest]

Hey C.J.

Great idea; however, the place sound icon on task bar is grayed out. I have
uninstalled soundmax and reinstalled it more times than I care to remember.
I cannot even make soundmax my default sound program because that too is
grayed out. Any other suggestions?

 

[C J.]

Yeah, Check in Device manager and see what got munged under Sound, audio
and game controllers. Sounds like something didn't complete setting up. To
access Device Manager, click on start, right click my computer, select
properties. On System Properties tab on hardware, and then click on Device
Manager... look for (X) or /!\ beside items in the Sound, audio and game
controllers hiearchy. Perhaps the Soundmax WDM driver could also be missing
or corrupted. <<(Just a thought)

 

[Jasper1106]

Hi guys,

I have the exact same problem, by the "sounds" of it we have nearly an identical setup with soundmax. After a reformat yesterday due to a new hard drive everything was fine, so I couldn't understand why the sound suddenly disappeared. Reading this post it is clear that when Service Pack 2 went on all the sound disappeared.

I looked through the device manager today to find that "Plug and Play software device Enumerator" has a yellow exclamation mark by it. With the properties:
"This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (code31)

I located the swenum.inf file on the Internet which is the drivers for this device so I have tried to reinstall but each time it turns up with this yellow exclamation mark.

I've reinstalled the drivers for soundmax from the Toshiba CD as well as downloading the fresh .zip for the sound card from their website.

System Info: Windows XP Home
Celeron CPU 2.60GHZ
496 RAM
Toshiba Satellite A40

Has anyone got any other ideas for the both of us?

 

[Jasper1106]

Finally found a fix after countless hours of trawling!!!

Hope this fixes it for you as well mate:

Hi to all! This message goes out to all of you who hadn't the luck to get their sound back to life with the given solutions in this thread: I followed all steps, but still my "PnP software enumerator" (or in german "PnP Softwaregeräte Enumerator") told me that he couldn't load the needed drivers. Consequently I had still no sound. I also made a windows repair install, but the problem was still there. After hundreds of trial & errors I finally came to a solution for WIN XP!:
1.) Deinstall your sound drivers. Save streamci.dll and swenum.sys and machine.inf to a temp folder as mentioned above.
2.) Deinstall your failing "PnP software enumerator".
3.) Go into the registry via regedit or the editor of your choice. In there close all keys so you just see "my work", "workplace" or whatever the englisch name for the german "Arbeitsplatz" is (it has a little computer symbol next to its name, I guess you know what I mean.)
4.) Then search for "swenum". Delete every key that you find. Before you do so I highly recommend to create a system restore point or a backup of your registry, just in case something goes wrong. You have to delete the whole key, not just the line with "swenum" in it. For example: You'll find the word "swenum" in a key where you can also find "pnp software enumerator" and some other entries. Again :You have to delete the whole key. On the left side you see an open folder in which you are in right now, deleteing this folder means to delete the whole key. Do so, it the quickest and easiest way. If there comes a warning that you don't have the permission to do so, right click the folder and give yourself the permissions to delete the folder ;-) Do this for all keys where you find the "swenum" in it. You should find about 5-10 keys.
5.) After you finished close the editor and reopen it again. Research the registry to make sure their is no more swenum entry.
6.) Restart, then check your registry again. Just for the case Win XP has reinstalled something. If you find another "swenum" entry delete it. Do also search for "PnP software enumerator". If you have done right before you shouldn't find anything. If you do anyway, delete the whole key again.
7.) Go to "windows/system32/drivers" and delete swenum.sys. Also go to "windows/system32" and delete the file streamci.dll (don't do that if you have forgotton to follow step1 of my description!)
8.) Now reinstall your "PnP software enumerator" following the steps mentioned in the posts above. (In the hardware manager click "have disk" and choose your temp folder and the inf file in there, choose "PnP software enumerator" under standard devices or something like that).
9.) If you have done right you should have the "PnP software enumerator" back without showing any errors. If you have done right Win XP shouldn't ask you to restart. Now install your sound drivers, restart and be happy again. I hope this solution did the trick for those who didn't find the posts above solving their problems. Maybe some steps can be left out, but I recommend to follow all of them, because I'm not sure where the errors is hiding exactly.

 

[Guest]

Well, let me tell you something...
I bought a sound card, installed it along with the updated s/w and still no
sound. Now I am really upset so I reformatted my computer, again, and this
time after I downloaded SP2 my sound icon was found, alive and well in the
sys tray. I am going to purchase another sound card for my wife's computer
because she has the same problem.
Thanks everyone.