Where, oh where, did my computer's sound go?

General Questions
#1

Earlier this evening, I visited Something Awful like I usually do on Tuesdays and Fridays (I like the Photoshop gags). Well, tonight they featured their “Fake S/A” gag in which it appears that their website has been hijacked.

The fake page was full of annoying Flash and Quicktime elements and so forth.

My computer did not like this one bit. The browser crashed. I re-booted and found that my display adapter was “missing” as was the mouse controls and sound.

I’m not saying the site did this to my computer, but it was the last site I visited before the problems started.

After fiddling around for about an hour, I was able to restore the video and mouse controls. I still do not have any sound. The speaker icon is missing from the systray. I tried “removing” the audio device and having the system “find” it. Didn’t help. I tried to go through the control panel, but it tells me there are no sound devices in my system. The speakers themselves work, but no program that uses sound (Media player, for example) will work.

Attempts at using Restore have failed. The system refuses to recognize any previously set restore points. This is unrelated since Restore is iffy at best. I’ve had to reset that feature twice before.

Here’s my setup:

HP Pavilion
1.2 Ghz AMD Athlon
128Mb memory
WinME
IE 6.0

Any clues on how to fix my sound?

#2

if you don’t have integrated sound you could probably locate drivers for it on the manufacturer’s website and reinstall them (using control panel > add hardware perhaps ). but if your sound is integrated i doubt you will find those.

by the way Windows ME is garbage, used to crash on me all the time. get XP.

#3

This needs some more info: do you know how to get to your BIOS settings? Your internal sound could be disabled.

If that is not the case, try to get your volume control back by going to Control Panel - Multimedia (or Sounds and audio devices) and check “show volume control on taskbar” (or “place volume icon in the task bar).

If that fails, you may need to download and install the latest sound drivers from HP.

#4

I tried that, but when I click on the audio tab, next to “Sound Playback - preferred device”: No playback device

I tried to “Add Hardware”, but no device was found.

#5

This happens all the times with the Pavilion integrated audio chipset. Use the fix detailed in the last SDMB thread about lost HP Pavilion sound and the sound will come back.

Se Is my soundcard dead?

#6

I went under the Device manager and under “Sound, video, and game controllers” all I see that’s sound related is “Riptide Audio Device”. I “removed” it and re-booted. The computer “found” it and re-installed the drivers.

No sound.

Could this be registry-related in any way?

I did run a virus scan, but nothing came up.