hey guys, im kat, and im 16...not that that matters.....

i recently restarted my computer from scratch, because i had all these VIRUSES and unwanted advertisements hidden somewhere in my hard drive, and have had to re install word and all the other stuff that you would usually use.

the thing is, everything works fine, except my sound.

i have windows xp for those who want to know.

i tried playing a cd and some other music i have downloaded in media player, only to have an error message come up and say "cannot PLAY back the audio stream: no audio hardware available, or the hardware is not responding."

so, i thought yeah ok, fine, so i searched my computer and yes i have a sound card, yes my speakers are plugged in in the right places and yes the speakers are turned on, and i havent found anything on my computer yet to help me, because i cant find the stuff that tells me what model my "devices" are and stuff.

i have however found that by going into control panel, then to printers and other harware, and then going to ad hardware that three of my "other devices"  (ethernet control, sm bus controller, and multimedia audio controller) have yellow question marks next to them.... i undertsand that this is a bad thing? anyway, i tried fixing it but do not know where or what the installation cds may be and what they may be called.... i thought this may be a contributing factor to why my sound isnt working.

i searched the internet too, and found nothing that may help me, THOUGH someone out there must knwo something about my problem!!!!

please get back to me soon!  

thank you!

[glb]kat[/glb]kat......If you click on control panel.....then click on "system".....the system properties window will open ....now click on the "hardware tab" and then click device manager.......you will see all the devices installed shown there. For details click on the + sign and then check each one out .....If you have an exclamation point there.....probably there is no driver installed . Windows Xp has a wide assortment of device drivers ......You say you restarted your computer from scratch...does that mean that you FORMATTED the hard drive and did a cvlean install of Win XP.......if so did you go to
http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/v5consumer/default.aspx?ln=en-us  
and D/L any updates available. If you havent ,there will be a few there and probably drivers as well. If you wish to D/l SP2 you will have to d/l some updates before you may D/l SP2...When you first started your pc after the format ....didnt you see the message come up that Windows had detected new hardware installed and then it would have installed a driver for it or would have asked you to install the necessary drivers ?
let us know and then we can go on .

dl65  Please Read This First - Viruses & Spyware

I suggest you install the programs recommended in order to prevent the 'Unwanted advertisements' and viruses from doing harm again.