I HATE Windows

[mdlbear]

Still struggling with chaoswolf's new computer. It's not pretty. Somewhere along the way, sound stopped working. Completely. Wouldn't even play the startup sound when you rebooted. No obvious problems -- nothing muted, device working OK according to the device manager, ... Turned the machine off, thinking it might be a thermal problem. It wasn't.

I was all set to take the damned thing back to Fry's and get our money back, when I decided to try restoring it to its original configuration. Sure enough, sound came back.

OK, so it's a software problem, cleverly disguising itself as hardware. It's Windows XP; go figure. Now comes the more tedious process of reconfiguring the system.

Comments

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

XP very stupidly turns the default sound settings in the Sound control panel to off; just pick the Default Sound Scheme and OK it and it comes back. While you're there you can put the volume back on the taskbar

[mdlbear]

The odd thing is that it was working, and I went all over the sound control panel, plus the troubleshooter. Come to think of it, I don't recall a control labeled "sound scheme"; maybe it's on some other control panel.

Besides, would that affect the startup sound?

[mdlbear]

OK, I did find the sound scheme, and it does include startup sound, but the initial symptom was that the media player wasn't working. As I said, I looked at all the "mute" boxes I could find to ensure they weren't checked. Could have missed one, I suppose.

Or it could be that something corrupted the driver.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Sounds (category view might add another layer) then pick a sound scheme. And yes - the startup and shutdown sounds are in there ;-) And yes, it's very weird why it does it!

See quotes on my "crazy project" page, <lj user="mdlbear">.

[chaoswolf]

I have a few quotes that are very fitting to describe the kind of detestment you feel for Windows. See my quotes page on my crazy project, which is still not finished yet, Located here.