Sound icon on taskbar

[Gordon]

I've lost the sound icon from the taskbar and can't get the sound
icon in Control Panel to respond. It will highlight when I click
on it once but when I click twice I get a momentary hourglass
then nothing.

I'm wondering if it would be workable to re-install my OS.

I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP 2 installed. This is on a new
computer with an Intel Core 2 duo processor, two 1 GB DDRAM
sticks and a 500 GB hard drive. For the most part the comptuer
works very well, but it frequently balks or re-starts when tying
to boot.

During shut down I get two messages...End Program DEVLDR and End
Program rundll32. I have to click on End to kill these so the
computer will complete the shut down process, then when I re-boot
it usually takes 3 or 4 trys before it gets up and running. It
will stall out and bo back to square one at the time I click on
the User icon to complete the start-up process.

My question...would it be prudent to re-install Windows XP Pro
from my ubgrade CD, then do an on-line update to get back to the
current configuration?

I still have my old Windows 2000 CD if the above process requires
a verification before installing the upgrade version of Windows
XP Pro

Thanks, Gordon

 

[Byte]

Do a search for SndVol32.exe which is the volume control, if found double
click it.
Otherwise go here - Download the program (SndVol32.exe)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071018041029AAolDTk

 

[Gordon]

Do a search for SndVol32.exe which is the volume control, if found double
click it.
Otherwise go here - Download the program (SndVol32.exe)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071018041029AAolDTk

Thanks, Byte, I did this and it all worked well. I now have
sndvol32.exe in my C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder. When I double
click it a small pop-up window opened with the label Volume
across the top but my computer hangs up each time I do this. I
have to do a ctrl-alt-delete to break out of this and it takes
several minutes to complete. Something serious is messed up, I'm
afraid.

Also, if I do a full shut down under this kind of lock-up I get a
window saying DEVLDR is running and if I shut it down it may
cause problems. Another similar window then pops up showing
rundll32 still running and warning me not to close it down.

I'm thinking I need to do a complete re-install of Windows XP
Pro, but my CD is an upgrade version that I bought to upgrade
from Windows 2000, and it is a bit out of date. On-line updates
have modified many of the files and I'm concerned that doing a
re-install from the original CD might really mess things up.

This is such a mess that I'm actually considering buying a copy
of VISTA and a new hard drive, then doing a complete fresh
install. I'd have to re-install all my client software and I
might hit some snags doing this, though.

Gordon