Alnemca

Alright guys,

I'm afraid I need some help, I've tried to correct this myself but can't seem to get it to work.

Well here's my problem; I came to play some music on my laptop but it came up with the error message " Windows media player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another program, or it may not be functioning properly". So I decide to investigate, and looked in the Control Panel and under Sound and Audio Devices, where it says "No Audio Device".

I then looked at updating the drivers but no joy, reinstalling the drivers but still no joy, reinstalled sndvol32.exe but still no joy. So then I thought I'd return to a restore point, and went back to Jan when I first got the laptop
but guess what still no joy! It has been OK up until recently so I cannot understand why it hasn't corrected itself when I've restored it?

When I try to open volume control (sndvol32.exe) it says there are no active mixer devices available. Also when I open sound recorder it says "Sound recorder cannot play back because a sound device is not installed. to install a sound device, go to Control Panel....."

I cannot figure this out as it says soundmax is installed?

I've also checked the bios but there does seem to anything related to the sound in bios (phoniexbios).

Also the drivers for the soundMAX are NOT digitally signed does this matter?

My laptop is a HP pavillion zv5014ea running XP home.

Any ideas how I can correct this, it being to annoy me now!

Any help greatly appreciated

Alnemca