sound card??

[gw84]

I'm having an issue with the sound on my laptop. SOMETIMES I will start the computer and the sound will work just fine. Other times I will get sound from certain things (windows messages, etc) and NOT from Instant messengers or music. I am so confused here. Is my sound card biting the dust? As of now, when I click the "volume" icon on the task bar, I get the message "there are no active mixer devices availiable. To install mixes devices......this program will now close" Now when I try to play a music file on my computer, I get this message: "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly". any thoughts guys?

[l_eclipse_l]

Go into device manager and update the driver. You should have a disk that came with your laptop for drivers/utilites, see if the sound driver is on that if Windows Update dosn't pick it up. Otherwise the manufacturer of your laptop should have it listed on their site for download.

[gw84]

i didn't get a driver cd with my laptop...lousy HP!. I did, however, go to HP's website and found some availiable drivers that had to do with sound. I'll try to download them tonight and see if that helps. thanks.

[BeZerK2112]

If all else fails you can try deleting your sound card from the device manager tree and reseting you laptop. It will reset the configuration for it, sometimes this works like a charm along with new drivers.