Help my sound card has mysteriously disappeared (damn u microsoft)

[Fat Tony!]

I was just minding my own buisness on the internet when suddenly i got the message -INTERNET EXPLORER MUST BE RESTARTED BECAUSE MICROSOFT MAKE CHEAP PRODUCTS. So i was mildly annoyed and used their help thingy and it told me to go to mircosoft update, i found a patch for it and installed it. it worked and i was happy, but it also showed some other updates that would be useful so i downloaded "C-Media multimedia software update released on March 26 2002" It said something about that it was unable to back up my original c media thing so i thought owell this thing will be better. I downloaded a few other probably irrelivent things then restarted the computer i went to do some other stuff and came back to play some music on it, however i noticed it didnt output any sound and then i noticed there was no sound symbol in the systray and also my sound card driver didnt exist. Unfortunatly i dont know what sound card i have and what driver im missing.

 

[oD1Nz]

Right Click "My Computer" ---> Down to "Manage" ---> Click "Device Manager" at the side ---> Expand "Sound, video and game controllers".

See anything that might give you an indication of what your sound card is there?

 

[giller_ste]

if u use xp, try doing a system restore to a point before this, but reinstalling ur sound card is an easy job if u have the drivers for it, if u see the sound card in the the device manager then click on it and then update the drivers if not , do this:

right click my computer

select properties

select the hardware tab

then click add new hardware


let it search for the soundcard

then choose to install the drivers and this should solve it

 

[Fat Tony!]

My sound card is not in the device manager and I havent got windows xp, I try and install a sound driver but i get an yellow "!" next to then newly installed driver. When i look at its properties it says its performing fine then i refresh and its deleted. Also i tried to install it again and it doesnt come up with any more drivers.

 

[Fat Tony!]

Ok i managed to get the sound icon back but when ever i play a file my computer crashes

 

[The Terminator]

are you sure you dont have integrated audio? if you do try to find the install disc that came with your mobo for the sound drivers on it.

 

[Fat Tony!]

Ive asked about the documentation and stuff that came with it and supposivly this computer was built by some guy and he kept all the disks and documentation which is a bit of a problem but oh well. The only things that I cannot do now is play files in media player and winamp 4 I can play sounds on games and stuff but cant listen to mp3s or videos because of no player to run them on.

 

[Fat Tony!]

It would seem that its nothing to do with my sound card anymore its just that whenever i open a program it crashes

 

[Washuu]

the auto-updater installed the wrong drivers, i have had that happen before, either do "roll-back" drivers
or find ur original driver files and reinstall them

 

[Fat Tony!]

Should I uninstall the driver i downloaded then? I managed to get sound to work again now I just cant use any programs. It could be some other download that did it too, i downloaded these from the windows update site:

"Root Certificates Update", "Internet Explorer Navigation Sound Update", "Windows Critical Update Notification 4.0", "DirectX 9.0b End-User Runtime", "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1" (Windows 98, Windows Me)