About a week ago, I noticed my PC randomly stopped playing sounds. It may have stopped earlier (such as after a Windows Update) but I don't use the sound too often so it was just recently that I noticed it. I checked by sound settings and discovered that XP convieniently forgot that I had a sound card.

I have searched the Internet relatively thoroughly for answers with no luck, so now I'll turn to you guys.

I have an ASUS P4S533 Motherboard with a built-in C-Media 8783 sound device. I know that the device did not short out or something because the motherboard "talks" to me during startup.
I have the most recent drivers, windows updates, Direct X, etc.

Also, after uninstalling and reinstalling my audio driver, a bunch of device CONFLICTS sprang up. "Microsoft Kernel Acoustic Echo Canceller" "Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter" "Microsoft Kernel DLS Synthesizer", "Microsoft Kernel DRM Audio Descrambler", "Microsoft Kernel GS Wavetable Synthesizer", and Microsoft Kernel Wave Audio Mixer" all give me a CODE 42 ("Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because there is a duplicate device already running in the system.")

I think that's all the information that you'll need to help me solve this problem. Thank you in advance.For starts, go to Control Panel/System and remove aLL sound devices. Reboot the mamchinen annd tell us what happens.

Were you messing with the CONTROLS or anything unusual prior to this?After uninstalling all audio devices and re-starting the computer, the appropriate devices were reloaded, and I was left exactly where I started before. However, after a SECOND restart, the conflicts were reduced to "Microsoft Kernel Acoustic Echo Canceller" and "Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter". (Further restarts have not cleared these two, unfortunately)

I only started messing with controls AFTER it broke to trying to get it to work again. It was probably a Windows Update that caused the problem. I have it set on automatic and I just let it do its thing.Boot up in safe mode, in device manager delete all that is in sound, video and game controllers. Reboot, then reinstall the sound drivers. Or you could try a system restore to when you KNEW all was well.