No Sound in XP after reformat

by jemicarus Aug 8, 2007 10:05AM PDT

Hello tech gods. I prostrate myself before your knowledge and humbly beg your assistance.

The computer is a Dell Inspiron 8500 Notebook, running
Windows XP SP2.

I reformatted my hard drive recently and reinstalled XP. The sound worked fine before the reinstall, and not at all afterwards. Everything else seems fine.

Thinking the problem was certainly a driver issue, I downloaded the latest relevant sound drivers from Dell. No dice. Called tech support - the representative took over my computer and, as I watched, did the same thing I had just done: not surprisingly, no dice again.

He then told me that buying a PCMCIA sound card would certainly, "no doubt about it" fix the problem. I did so: a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS. No dice.

With both my internal sound card and the PCMCIA, in the Device Manager I get a yellow exclamation: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)." This is ********, since I (and the Dell guy) successfully installed the (AC97) driver several times, and I did the same thing with the PCMCIA card. Dismay and frustration were again the only results.

After reading some forums, I found and installed the latest chipset drivers from Intel (the 845MP chipset), thinking that this might be the problem: again, no dice.

I hate to ask for your time, tech gods, but I am all out of options. My knowledge has reached its limit and I can turn only to you in my hour of need. Please help. SOS. Thank you.

--- JEM

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -

Perhaps Silly Suggestion........Is It Possible.....

by tobeach Aug 8, 2007 5:03PM PDT

Dell used an factory installed CD/Dvd program which auto took control of sound functions (re-directed it to itself) and this program (of course) is not native to XP. Perhaps came on a 2nd disk with machine when new?

Might it have been on a recovery partition (damn them)instead of giving you a CD? If partition, did you burn a CD copy of the partition??

Just a WAG really but often notebooks have manufacturer customized programs. No expert, so large grain of salt needed w/ this advice.

- Collapse -

1 More Thought Go Thru ALL Settings in CP....

by tobeach Aug 8, 2007 5:14PM PDT

>Sounds & audio devices watching for some stupid box not checked (like "use default device" or even "mute on" or volume default minimum) or other silliness . Same for AC97 &/or CD/DVD program settings.
I once had a problem & it FINALLY turned out to be some corrosion on receiving jack for speakers. Just twisted the jack around a few times & suddenly ..clean sound. Hope it's that easy for you!

- Collapse -

def check sounds and audio devices

by ctbarry Aug 8, 2007 10:20PM PDT

Like tobeach said its amazing what a missed tick will do. Check sounds and audio devices. I had the same problem with sons comp. All looked ok in device manager. Turned out beceause he had installed his bluetooth before his sound driver, it was showing as the default audio. We picked the right one from drop down box and everthing was perfect.

- Collapse -

re: sound problem

by jemicarus Aug 9, 2007 11:04AM PDT

I really believe that there is something interfering with the way that my sound drivers work: The "driver is corrupted or missing" yellow exclamation point in the device manager pretty clearly demonstrates that. The thing is that the drivers are not missing, nor are they corrupted, since the same drivers worked just fine before I reinstalled XP.

About that Dell DVD/CD program suggestion, your post made me aware of what you were referring to: I deleted the program completely, but the driver issue remains.

Thank you for your suggestions. Hopefully they keep coming until something works. Cheerio!

- Collapse -

Sound Problem

by Stan Chambers Aug 9, 2007 12:38PM PDT

After reformating, we have to install all of the drivers for the hardware. Winxp may install some of these for us, but not always the right ones. Get Belarc or some such program and determine what sound card you have. Then go to the manufacturers site and download and install the latest version of the driver for your card.
Hope this helps.

- Collapse -

My Dell has a Driver disk

by PudgyOne Aug 9, 2007 1:34PM PDT

You can put in the Driver disk and boot from it. It will help you diagnose the problem.

Did you try deleting the entry with the yellow exclamation mark?

If the hard ware is there, then go to the control panel and add new hardware and run the wizard.

First go to start and look at your startup programs. It should be empty, unless you want a program to startup. If you have digital line detect, it will cause you problems. Safe to delete this from the startup list.

Are you getting other error messages?

Did you have sound a few days ago, then lose it.

I had to replace the following dlls in the Windows/system32 folder

ntdll.dll
faultrep.dll
netevent.dll

I was getting an error message about problem with generic service had to close and send report to Microsoft. I would also lose sound after a day of so.

I downloaded the dll's from here.

Go to Windows/system32 folder and rename the ntdll.dll to oldntdll.dll

now copy and paste all three dll's to the system32 folder. After you restart your computer go and remove the oldntdll.dll

Hope this helps.

Rick

No Sound in XP after reformat

CNET Forums

Other Forums

Forum Info