Problems with sound card!!
 

Hello! Hopefully one of you fine people can help me out.

Recently this week I reinstalled my OS and everything else. Now the only thing that remains is that I cannot seem to get my sound card to work properly. For two days I have tried every option that I could research online. I get sound related error messages every time. (...and going slightly manic too ;)

The sound card is an old MPU-401 on a Medion Win XP pro v.2002 SP2 P42.8Ghz 512mb ram. SN:41511010010379. I have gone to www.medion.com and downloaded all the drivers for this machine.

Winamp gives me the following message:
Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration.
Error code: 88780078

Windows Media Player gives me the following:
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.

However, I am sure I have a sound device, and I did get all the required drivers I needed to update. I updated all I could, including DirectX9 (5~min), which is needed for DirectSound.

What is weirder still, is that none of the normal windows sounds are working either.

When I check Services (run: services.msc) or check the Device Manager, or check Sounds and Audio Devices in Control Panel, all seem to show proper drivers and settings. However, in the Audio tab of Sounds and Audio Devices, both Sound Playback and Recording are greyed out, and say No Playback Devices are present. The MIDI playback default is MPU-401.

I am very confused, and I need serious help please! Is it really just driver conflicts, or what?

Oh yeah, and I am a paid & registered user of winamp. I just have to find my friggin pass, or key, or whatever. I know it's somewhere..... (digs through stacks of data cds)

oh yeah this might help the diagnostic process...

This is a forum thread on annoyances.org that has all the different solutions that I tried:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1018722575

There were 10 hours of searching and messing around with menus etc.This is the one forum which listed them all in one post. Very useful stuff, lots of people found a solution, alas not for myself.

also, this seemed like the standard protocol to fix this type of problem in winamp: http://www.ozzu.com/mswindows-forum/...or-t24932.html

alas, it just scratched the surface of my issue. didn't seem to help in the least.

wtf is with the urls not showin' up????

w w w .annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1018722575

w w w .ozzu.com/mswindows-forum/winamp-gives-bad-directsound-drivers-error-t24932.html

mmok then.
*keeps helping himself*

w ww.techspot.com/vb/topic3088-3.html

well, at least this thread will guide you to some understanding of this issue. since its a problem that is happening on competely different rigs, the solutions seem to be as wide-ranging and diverse as the factors that lead to the problem. best to cover your ass and try a variety of software fixes, but rest assured your soundcard is likely okay.