I am pleased to find this site. Looks unique and of course, hopeful. I am sure I will enjoy checking out this site. But now, I am so fried from dealing with this issue, I HOPE I can even type out the right information. I am sleep deprived from dealing with this. Anyway...

I'm not sure at all how I arrived with my audio gone, but I had been trying to remedy a lag problem when playing music with itunes and Rhapsody. I was getting periodic skipping episodes of three to four seconds long. Process explorer showed it as a hardware interrupt problem. So I started tweaking this and that, nothing out of the normal loop. Being the genius I am, system restore was not enabled at the time.

So, Here I am with:
Main Issue: No Sound
Computer: Dell Dimension 8300, XP home
Soundblaster Live! soundcard

Actions taken so far: Uninstalled card, drivers, DL'd and reinstalled installed chipset drivers, audio drivers, card drivers, result = nothing. Made sure bios onboard sound is off and Windows Audio service is enabled. Safe mode device mgr = no conflicts.

Everything looks fine, drivers and card show up in all the right places until you actually want sound, you get errors like no audio device, no mixing device, blah blah blah. For example, when you go to start>control panel>sound and audio devices> it says "no audio device"

I even did a repair install of Windows.

The only time I get ANYTHING from the speakers is when I run dxdiag, I hear the music when testing directmusic.

In fact, google "no audio device" and see hundreds of people descending into manic depression.

For myself, I am barely able to think straight. I am usually able to puzzle out a solution. But this is a hard one.

Thanks for listening.
Quick search reveals that you have a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card.
Don't KNOW how to fix your problem but I figured it might help the gurus to know the model of the sound card.

Related problems-
http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=+Dell+Dimension+8300+no+sound&hl=en&lr=&sa=X&oi=groups&ct=title

Dell Dimension 8300 with Audigy 2 Problems   ... http://tinyurl.com/hgmpb HARDWARE: Dell Dimension 8300 (3GHz, 1GB ... part of original
desktop purchased from Dell. ... RESULT: No sound via Audigy 2 through speakers ...
alt.sys.pc-clone.dell - Sep 10, 10:28 am by Gary - 17 messages - 7 authors  

Sound on Dell Dimension 8300 (FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE)   ... the builtin sound card present in Dell Dimension 8300 but cant ... config: Error: device
"sound" is unknown ... multimedia, audio> at device 31.5 (no driver attached ...
lucky.freebsd.questions - Mar 30 2005, 7:30 pm by AMIT Kumar Saha - 5 messages - 3 authors  

Enabling sound on Dell Dimension 8300 (FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE)   ... the builtin sound card present in Dell Dimension 8300 but cant ... npx0: INT 16 interface
acpi0: on motherboard ... VGA> at device 0.0 (no driver attached ...
lucky.freebsd.questions - Mar 27 2005, 7:08 pm by Amit Kumar Saha - 1 message - 1 author  

Sound on Dell Dimension 8300 - Linux newbie   ... My problem - nobody of my friends is interested in Linux, so there is no help
available. I have got a Dell Desktop, model Dimension 8300. ...
linux.debian.user - Apr 22 2005, 6:30 am by Vegard|drageV - 3 messages - 3 authors  

kern/59098: [sound] Dell Dimension 8300 integrated SoundMAX ...   Synopsis: [sound] Dell Dimension 8300 integrated SoundMAX not working in FreeBSD
5.1 State ... GMT 2005 State-Changed-Why: Closed, since there's no feedback after ...
lucky.freebsd.multimedia - Sep 11 2005, 5:30 pm by Alexander Leidinger - 1 message - 1 author