A couple months ago, I used my computer one evening. Nothing was wrong, everything was working just fine.
The next day I had no sound.
In an attempt to play some music using Windows media player, I found this out.
I select a song from the library, it takes a moment to load it, then a red x appears next to the title and continues down the song lists for about 5 songs, and an error message pops up.
"Windows Media Player cannot play sound 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."
I checked all connections, tried other programs, everything was connected, nothing else would play sound. I tried another speaker system, that didn't work either.
So I bought a new sound card. I disabled the on-board sound, installed the new card, and that still didn't help.
If I go to the Device Manager and check the sound card through that, it states that the device is working properly. However, if I click on properties, it states the driver is enabled but has not been started. It states that for Audio, MIDI and Sound Mixer.
When I attempt to play computer games, like for example, The Sims 2, it plays fine, but has no sound. And the audio options are grayed out or unselectable.
However, I can still hear the system beeps with errors and all that.
I miss my downloaded music, I miss my in-game sounds. Geez, I even miss the stupid beeps and noises of basic programs on the computer!
I also seem to be having a problem with updates to my computer. I have it set for automatic. Occasionally it will download an update, but it won't install. And when I go to PC Pitstop to test my system, I get this message before I start: Attention: Your WMI Installation appears to have a problem
Our tests use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to gather some of the information from your system. On your system, WMI is reporting an error. This could cause certain information to be reported as blanks or zeroes. See our instructions for fixing WMI here.
So, I don't know what to do short of taking it somewhere and getting royally screwed and over-charged for them to fix the possible problem or problems they SAY it has.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.