I know there are some very clever people on here that might be able to help, as I am totally stuck. I did post this on another forum that I go on and I will cross post the replies, so you can see what I have tried etc.

Ok here goes...

My post......I don't know what I might have done but for some reason my sound on the pc suddenly stopped working, and I don't know why.

The other day my daughter was listening to something on the pc via her headphones and it was working fine, then the next day we have no sound.

I have gone though the following to try and locate the problem but got no where.

1. Opened up control panel and checked the sounds and audio devices, and I can't find the problem, although it does say on the volume tab, no audio detected.
2. Removed speaker wires from the hard drive after checking they were inserted into the right holes, which yes they were. Re-inserted them and checked they were firmly in the correct speaker holes at the back of the sub-woofer speaker, which yes they are.
4. Tried playing a song and get this warning "Windows media player cannot play the sound file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly" Then there is two buttons: Close and Web Help.
5. The other day I did have the volume icon in the task bar by the clock (I don't now, don't know why) and when I clicked on it, nothing was muted.
6. I have one of those keyboards that has all these extra buttons and when you click on the mute button, a tiny thing pops up by the clock its like a white bar and it shows you a speaker with a red circle around it crossed out, so I am wondering if this is the problem, I have clicked on this small icon, and right clicked but I can not do anything. So I un plugged my keyboard, then turned pc on, let it load up, turned it off, re-inserted the keyboard, thinking it would recognise new hardware but it didn't, notice anything.

So I am now totally stuck, any ideas, on how to get my sound back.

Someones reply......Without know ing which sound hardware you have I can't give definite help but try this.
Go to control panel -> system -> hardware -> device manager. You will probably see some sort of warning around sound,video & game controllers in the list. If there is, double click it and try to re-install the driver.

If you have an installation cd for a sound device you could try re-installing that.

My reply.....Yayyyyyyy we have progress.

I did as you suggested, it came up with bluetooth audio disabled, so I double clicked it and it is now enabled.

It will allow me to play the file now, whereas before it wouldn't BUT we still have no sound

Someones reply......Was that the only one showing up with an error?

My Reply.....I thought so but I rechecked, and I have a red circle on the: network adapters > Bluetooth PAN Network Adapter.

Should I double click that to get rid of the red circle?.

Someones reply......I don't think anything to do with bluetooth should affect your sound unless there is a conflict somewhere. If all of the items in Sound, Video & Game Controllers section - especially anything to do with sound - are ok then your problem most likely is somewhere else.

Do you connect your pc with your phone (or anything else) via bluetooth? If you don't I would leave it disabled.

My Reply....Yes, I have a bluetooth dongle and I use it to transfer things from my pc to mine, and the childrens phones. 

Not had a reply since and put Still very stuck here, would reformatting it help?

Now, I somehow ended up I think creating a network for my home pc, as I had by my clock a pic of two pc's with a red cross, and when I right clicked it said something about my firewall settings, so I checked that and everything is turned on. And the 2nd thing it said was something about connecters I think and when I clicked it, the pc took me through this wizard, which I think was something to do with setting up a network for my pc. Now since we only have one pc in the house I am assumming this is not needed. But I ended up setting one up, least I think I did.

And after all that we still have no sound

So can anyone help, or would reformatting solve the problem?

Here's hoping!!

From someone not very technically minded

sorry can't help but my sound went about 2 wks ago after burning cds. So will watch this post with interest and hopefully get mine sorted too.

Hi

Did you actually try the restore CD? I had someting similar with mine a while ago and it was to do with the audio driver. I used the restore CD and it fixed it. When you start up do you get any error messages?

Caroline

No, I don't get any error messages at all.

I will get some cd-rw's tomorrow so I can save all my files and do a restore, hopefully that will solve it.

Thanks for your help.

You can do a system restore that takes your settings back to how they were, ie a date previous, but it doesn't destroy any files or anything...go to all programmes from start menu, go to accessories, go to SYSTEM TOOLS choose system restore (from the bottom I think) and you can choose a date, might not work the first date you try so try another...hope this helps, regards, Dawn

I did a system restore and no joy, I took it back to before I removed the Samusung studio thing which is what I thought was causing the problem, but no joy. Although I did get the found new hardware and it mentioned it was something to do with audio. Do you think I can use the re-format cd to re-install the audio device?

Later today I will do a full reformat.

Well I have done a full re-format and i am glad to say my sound is back, I must have unknowningly deleted a file that was needed when I deleted some unused programs.