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Hi. Decided to de-clutter my PC, and although I was careful to only uninstall stuff that hadn't been used in years, I appear to have deleted the software that operated the speakers. When I start the PC I get a message about "New Hardware Found" (the speakers, presumably) and an install wizard for new software. But when I try to download what it suggests, I get a warning saying that the software could damage my system and it is "Strongly Recommended" that I discontinue. Can anybody advise please? Much obliged for any help.

Hi Ron,
What Operating system do you have, XP, Vista or Windows 7?

Have a look in the system tray next to the clock, is teh speaker icon there?
If so, click it and ensure it is not Muted.

If that does not sort it, go to Device Manager and look for the Sound, Video and Games Controllers. Expand the list by clicking and look for the Audio card, double click it and if working OK it should say that it is working fine.
If not working, click the Driver tab and click to update the driver.

Post back

dave

You haven't turned it off on the keyboard.

Also check that the audio output is not set to Headphone.

Dave, Its possible to have the speakers at lowest volume and not actually muted so icon looks fine. I did one time with VLC player, don't know how but realtec got all upset with itself

Ron Manager wrote:Hi. Decided to de-clutter my PC, and although I was careful to only uninstall stuff that hadn't been used in years, I appear to have deleted the software that operated the speakers. When I start the PC I get a message about "New Hardware Found" (the speakers, presumably) and an install wizard for new software. But when I try to download what it suggests, I get a warning saying that the software could damage my system and it is "Strongly Recommended" that I discontinue. Can anybody advise please? Much obliged for any help.

If you've been uninstalling software and now the sound has stopped working and you get a "New Hardware Found" message I imagine you've uninstalled the sound card drivers as some of these add an entry into add/remove programs. I'm assuming the sound card is built into your motherboard, so if Dave's suggestion for updating the driver from Device Manager doesn't work, post back the make and model of your PC and if you know it the make and model of your motherboard. If you have a discrete sound card post back the make and model. We can then tell you where to go to download the driver installer.

Many thanks for the replies, folks. Followed Dave's route, but couldn't find anything specifically entitled "Audio Card", just "Audio Codecs" and "Legacy Audio Drivers" (WindowsXP, by the way) Both had a "working properly"message, but something entitled "Mulitmedia Audio Driver" had a "Not Installed (Code 28) message with it, and an exclamation mark inside a kind of yellow disc. Tried to install it following the path the Wizard suggests, but then get a message something like "Avance AC97 Audio has not passed Windows log testing to verify it's compatibility with Windows XP" and a warning not to continue.

The PCitself is a pretty ancient one, a Tiny Athlon XP2600+.

Thanks again for taking the trouble to reply, everyone.

When you get the "Avance AC97 Audio has not passed Windows logo testing to verify it's compatibility with Windows XP" message there should be a button to choose to "Continue Anyway". Click that and see if that works. There's a chance the message could come up more than once.

Ron,
The warning message indicates that you have a Realtek AC97 sound card on your computer.
If the instructions from Rich, above, don't work, try downloading the drivers from
http://download.cnet.com/Realtek-AC-97- ... 38712.html

dave

Hi again. Tried ignoring that warning (though I must admit it still worries me a bit) but came to a halt when I got this message- "The file ALCXWDM.SYS an Avance AC97 Audio driver disk is needed"

Tried downloading the drivers as Dave suggested, but still no sound.

I've also uninstalled the Multimedia Audio Driver (the one with the yellow warning symbol) Should I have done that?

Thanks again for helping. Much obliged.

Look in Device manager for any reference to Realtek or Realtek Audio and double click on it.
In the drivers tab click to update drivers and OK any popups.

dave

Hi Dave. Thanks for sticking with this. Found Realtek under "Network Adaptors" and clicked to update, but got the following message "Can not find better match for your hardware than the software you currently have installed" Still no sound, though.

Ron,
Just to check the sound card output, do you have a set of headphones with a small jack plug to try in the headphone socket?

Also, can you do a system restore to before you started uninstalling those programs?
If you can, do it and check the sound. And then you will have to uninstall them again, one at a time and with a reboot after each one, and test the sound.

If you successfully do a restore,then down load and install:
Revo Uninstaller
In the final clean up only delete entries in bold type
Then use Revo to remove programs in future.

dave

Ron Manager wrote:Hi again. Tried ignoring that warning (though I must admit it still worries me a bit) but came to a halt when I got this message- "The file ALCXWDM.SYS an Avance AC97 Audio driver disk is needed"

Tried downloading the drivers as Dave suggested, but still no sound.

I've also uninstalled the Multimedia Audio Driver (the one with the yellow warning symbol) Should I have done that?

Thanks again for helping. Much obliged.

I downloaded the Realtek driver that Dave posted. I used 7-Zip http://www.7-zip.org/ to extract it to a folder. Within the extracted files theres a folder called WDM. That contains a copy of ALCXWDM.SYS.

Just to wrap this one up, I did a system restore as suggested by Dave M and got my sound back at last. Took me 4 attempts though before any changes were made at all. Thanks to all who took the trouble to help, especially Dave and Chat-to-Rich. Much obliged.

Ron,
Glad to hear that the speakers are now working after the system restore.
That basically points to one of two things that caused the problem.

a) Finger trouble with, possibly clicking a wrong button or pressing a combination of keyboard keys, or

b) Some program that has been downloaded and conflicted with the sound card settings.

If you now discover that a recently installed program is not there anymore, that could have been the culprit. If you need that program, download and install it again, then immeadiately check your speakers are still working.
If not, get back with the name of the software program that is causing the problem and we will see what we can do.

If that was not the problem then just carry on as normal and play a bit of music everytime you use your computer to prove that the speakers are working.

dave