I've lost all sound and when I clicked on Volume CONTROL at Accessories>Entertainment>, nothing appeared.    I have also lost the Sound icon from my tray.    I opened the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and when I ran the Sound 1,2 and 3 tests they all reported:--" Failure --- (Direct Sound Create) HR Result =0x88780078 (No Driver)      I then downloaded Asrocks C-Media 2042(AC97) Audio Device and the installation apparently went smoothly but I still had no sound and when I ran the Diagnostic sound tests again,they still reported (No Driver)!!      Where do I go from here,please.?  Cheers, Alpha.    (Win98SE/AOL9.0/Broadband Silver)      :-?Delete all sound DRIVERS in Control Panel/System and reboot. What happens now?

Is this driver for Win98SE? Newer boards are dropping support for anything less than 2000.Before you delete any drivers, go into device manager and update driver.Thanks GX1-Man and 2k-Dummy for your responses.     Taking the second first, I have no "Update Driver" in my Win98SE Device Manager.     Under Sound,Video and Game Controllers, an entry confirms the installation of the AC97 Driver and there is also an entry-"Unknown Device"- which has a yellow 0 beside it.       It may not be relevant, but a PCI Universal Serial Bus entry has a yellow ? and an O beside it.     To answer GX1-Man, I was advised to get the AC97 by someone who builds computers and, although I'm not positive about it, I think it is the same as the driver I had originally.
Could you please explain your suggestion to delete all sound drivers, which sounds rather a  drastic "solution" to me ?   (But what do I know.!!)                   Cheers,      Alpha.Assuming you had the correct sound driver (and you may have, IF it used to work) but Windows cannot use it, deleting the drivers and then rebooting will usually allow Windows to sort it out and reload the correct one. If the correct one was never there, then all bets are off.

What is your motherboard make and model, as it sounds like you have onboard sound, rather than an add-in card? If you don't know, download Everest to confirm:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html
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What is your motherboard make and model, as it sounds like you have onboard sound, rather than an add-in card?

Assuming you had the correct sound driver (and you may have, IF it used to work) but Windows cannot use it, deleting the drivers and then rebooting will usually allow Windows to sort it out and reload the correct one. If the correct one was never there, then all bets are off.

Just picking any old AC97 driver is not guaranteed to work even if it appears to be correctly installed.

It's a K7S41GX and all the relevant drivers can be found [highlight]here[/highlight]. The audio package supports Win98.

DirectSound test results: Failure at step 3 (DirectSoundCreate): HRESULT = 0x8878000a (The request failed because DirectSound resources, such as the priority level, were already in use by another caller.)

 
DirectMusic test results: Failure at step 6 (Activating the IDirectMusicPort): HRESULT = 0x8878000a (The request failed because DirectSound resources, such as the priority level, were already in use by another caller.)

1)    Halt any processes that may be using any soundcard resources whatsoever. 2)    Open Device Manager, select the card, right click and uninstall it.
3)      Run the Add New Hardware wizard and point it at your new drivers.

What is your motherboard make and model, as it sounds like you have onboard sound, rather than an add-in card? If you don't know, download Everest to confirm:

Bringing up the Task Manager (CTL-ALT-DEL) will show a list of running processes. Do any look audio related?

Lets see if we can resolve the issue. Yes, choose sound video and game controler, right click and choose properties, then choose update driver. When it asks the location of the driver choose the folder where the correct sound driver is located. It will do the rest and then you should rebooot and experience sound!