One of my stupid cousins recently came over and messed with my computer somehow and now I am missing a sound device. The sound device is supposed to be listed under "Sound, video, and game controllers" in the device manager windows when you go to Control panel<Performance and Maintenance<System<Hardware. This means that any type of audio media cannot be played because there is nothing to play it. I troubleshooted it and still don't know how to fix it. Does anyone know how I can reinstall the sound device in my computer that allows audio files to be played? My computer is a normal Dell laptop, windows XP home edition. The other computer in my house is a desktop, same windows xp, and the sound device on there is Creative SB Live. Any help is greatly appreciated. Edit: After wringing cousin's neck, I realized that the actual sound card is still there, as in nothing was physically removed from the computer, but no sound. He just clicked on something and deleted something and now I don't know what to do. Apparently, he doesn't know either.
Check the connections and the volumes. Try reinstalling your sound card's drivers. Make sure your sound card is enabled in the BIOS settings.
Thanks for the tip Glenn. I fixed it by doing a system restore. It basically undid everything that ruined the sound in the first place.
This has happened to me before when my brother ended one of the "SVChost.exe" processes in the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del). A restart always fixed the problem.
Unless you were one of the people to download the Half Life 2 source code package when it leaked. If you unrared it regularly, you got a new svchost...and it was baaad