sound not working suddenly

[Richard H Paul]

all of a sudden the sound stopped working on most of the applications, but
strangely, Music Match Jukebox still has sound. The other media players
don't work, I get nothing from internet videos, etc.

I am running WinXP Home Edition on a Dell Dimension 4600 PC. I've never had
this problem before. When I open up the Control Panel > Sounds and Audio
Devices > Audio I see grayed out areas and the Sound Card is not present.
Instead the dropdown list says: Modem 0 or something like that.

What could have caused this to happen and how to fix it?

thanks

 

[John Tiesi]

I have had this happen on several boxes I support. What I do is go to the
properties of the Windows Audio Service and set it to restart on fail.

 

[Guest]

I got an emachine, for my daughter, and I got a similar problem. Emachine
tech support gave me a "detailed" emaol of several pages how to diagnose, but
it was of no help.

The strange part with my problem is the "sound card" appears when I check in
the control panel, in the first minute or so of the startup, so I can go onot
"YouTube", play a song, but a few minutes later, the sound card disappears.

So, something in the startup sequence knocks it out.

Restoring the system to a prior point helped, at it appears an update by
from April was the culprit. When the system updated itself again, it no
longer worked.

Checking the manufacturer of the sound card, there was a bulletin saying a
updated driver would help. I did that, but still the same problem.

I somewhat solved the problem by setting the system back to a "prior point"
and not UPDATING, since May 2007, and so far so good. There's message there
that "updates are available to install", and I just don't click it.

In other words, if I don't want any problems, I keep the system as is as of
April 2007.

I didn't do much since as I got busy, and it was just a machine for my 10
year old to play games and surf the net.

 

[Guest]

I got an emachine, for my daughter, and I got a similar problem. Emachine
tech support gave me a "detailed" emaol of several pages how to diagnose, but
it was of no help.

The strange part with my problem is the "sound card" appears when I check in
the control panel, in the first minute or so of the startup, so I can go onot
"YouTube", play a song, but a few minutes later, the sound card disappears.

So, something in the startup sequence knocks it out.

Restoring the system to a prior point helped, at it appears an update by
from April was the culprit. When the system updated itself again, it no
longer worked.

Checking the manufacturer of the sound card, there was a bulletin saying a
updated driver would help. I did that, but still the same problem.

I somewhat solved the problem by setting the system back to a "prior point"
and not UPDATING, since May 2007, and so far so good. There's message there
that "updates are available to install", and I just don't click it.

In other words, if I don't want any problems, I keep the system as is as of
April 2007.

I didn't do much since as I got busy, and it was just a machine for my 10
year old to play games and surf the net.