no windows sounds

[lui_the_lizard]

Hey I'm having some problems and was hoping you guys could shed some light on the subject.

System: Win XP Pro (SP 1)
Crystal Soundfusion Audio Device
Legacy Audio Drivers

For some reason, windows sounds are not played on my computer. I can play files in winamp or WMP, and all is fine. When I play games sound works great. However, I get nothing when my computer starts up, shuts down, etc., and I get no sounds in internet explorer.

I checked all of the setting that I could think of that may apply (iexplorer options, device manager, sounds & audio devices). It says the device is working properly. The "sound scheme" is set to the windows default. As far as I can tell, all of the settings are such that sound should be played.

One more thing, in the sounds tab of "sounds & audio devices", I can't preview sounds- the play button is greyed out.

I hadn't even noticed the missing sounds until my dad pointed it out a few days ago, so I'm not sure how or when it happened.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you!

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

I am not really familiar with XP, so this may not be helpful, not to mention that it is probably too simple, but anyway.... have you checked to make sure that wav files are not set to mute in your basic sound settings. This would be the ones associated with the speaker icon on the desktop. That is about the only thing I can think of that might grey out the setting.

Another longshot would be to try the repair function from the XP CD.

[lui_the_lizard]

Thanks, but all the volume controls are normal. I might have to try the repair, but I'm going to wait for some more reply's first.

[mjc]

Check and make sure that your sound card shows up under the "Preferred Device" for playback.

[lui_the_lizard]

Thanks guys, but...

If "preferred device" is the same as "default device" then yes, my sound card is selected. I also tried disassociating my wav files from winamp, at which point I dusted off windows media player for a little test run. For some reason it said I was missing audio codecs (although all my audio played fine in winamp). So I updated to WMP 9, and all audio now plays fine in wmp and winamp. However, my original problem still persists.

I'm getting closer and closer to trying the repair thing budfred mentioned.....

Thanks for your help... anything else?

[mjc]

No, default device, may not necessarily be your sound card, it could be the wave device for you modem. Select the sound card and give it a try.

[Paul Komski]

Greyed-out panels often indicates that there is a drivers problem. You could also run dxdiag from the run box and hopefully there will both a sound and a music tab showing there; if not that is often also an indication of bad or wrong drivers. From DirectX you can also test both the sound and music and try the other troubleshooters there too.

[Sylvander]

Go to "Start>Help>Sound Cards>Troubleshooting" and use the troubleshooter to help diagnose the problem.

Just yesterday I replaced the generic windows driver with the driver supplied by the manufacturer of the chip on my sound card and the NetMeeting "Tools>Audio Tuning Wizard" reported that some functionality was no longer supported. I put back the original driver and the functionality returned.

To update the driver go to "Control Panel>Sound Video & Game Controllers>[your sound card]Control Interface>Properties>Driver>Update Driver" and select "Search for a better Driver>Specify a location" and type or select the c:\ [root folder on the c: drive] so it searches the whole c: drive.
In my case it found a more up to date ".inf" file in the "c:\Windows\INF\" folder.

Just as a check:
To preview sounds in the sound scheme you must first "Select" an "Event" [so it is highlighted].
Only then does the greyed out play button colour up and become available to play the associated sound for that event.

[pentachris]

Have you windows-explored your way to c:\windows\media and made sure all the requisite .wav files are there?

[Mark Miller]

This is going to sound weird but it happened to me. Did you mute anything while online? For some reason this carried over to whole setup and I had to go back to site and go back to sound.
Just a hint as this did help me with same problem.
Mark

[lui_the_lizard]

Hey guys...

Thanks for all your help, but it all seems to be to no avail. I tried everything mentioned. dxdiag was all set, everything seems like it should be all set. Since sound plays in games/winamp/WMP, I'm lead to believe it has to be some sort of windows setting problem... but I've checked everything and I'm stumped.

One thing (quoting mjc)...

No, default device, may not necessarily be your sound card, it could be the wave device for you modem. Select the sound card and give it a try.

I'm not so sure what you mean by this... I can't find anything about the wave device for my modem. I was mostly playing around in sound and audio devices properties. But I think I've played around with just about everything!

Thanks for the attempted help guys, but I'm kinda :confused: right now

[mjc]

Often, if you have a voice modem, yo will have something in Device manager called Wave Device for xxxx modem. This is usually just a software/virtual sound device. This in certain cases can be treated like a sound card.

It is justa nother audio device that Windows could possible see as a sound card.

At this point I would go and uninstall/reinstall the sound card drivers, probably with an updated version.

[ErnieK]

lui
Just a thought.

Do you allow your computer to go onto HIBERNATE? Do you have hibernation enabled? This can (known fault, for some mysterious windows reason) sometimes stop the sound in Win XP if it is an "Older" sound card and your drivers are not XP specific. Even installing w2k drivers will not work round this probem.

[Sylvander]

I wonder if you don't have installed, that part of Windows which plays sounds for events?

Go to:
"Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs>Properties>Windows Setup>Multimedia>Sample Sounds [and/or Sound Recorder]"
and make sure they are ticked.

Was the Sound Troubleshooter of no help?

[lui_the_lizard]

Sound troubleshooter was of no help, I tried uninstalling/reinstalling and changing drivers... nothing. I went to windows setup in add/remove programs and there was nothing in there about windows sounds. Are you sure you're talking about winXP sylvander? Ernie - hibernation was enabled, but I've never used it. I disabled it and it didn't help.
:mad: :confused: :mad: :confused: hehe...
thanks

[Sylvander]

I have Windows 98, but surely WinXP has something similar?

When Windows is installed, certain features must be selected for installation.

If the ability to play sounds, that are associated with certain events, is not installed originally, you should be able to select them for installation now.

[lui_the_lizard]

Thank you to everyone who posted here. I ended up doing a repair off of the winXP install disk, which fixed my problem. I'm still confused though... it shouldn't have come to that. Anyway, many thanks!

[Budfred]

If something in XP was broken, that is the only way that it would get fixed, so it did need to come to that.:)