Onboard sound

Ok i know it's not the best thing in the world but ive always used it! Now i did have a spare sound card lying around one day but... i gave it away because it was cheap and taky and the the onboard one was actually better but now i have a problem... NO SOUND!

Ok here is the situation last night i pressed the "mute" button on my keyboard as i could hear abit of feedback from one of the speakers as i was watching the tele and it dissapeared!

But then this morning i went ot play some music and i couldnt i had to connect my ipod to the sterio instead as i didnt have time to have a fiddle lol we'll now ive tried to sort it and ive not had much joy! Infact i still have no sound after an hour and i want to play a game :'( have i somehow fried the onboard sound lol?

Oh and i have tried reinstalling the software i even tried uninstalling it but at 54% it stopped (not the computer the uninstall) would removing the device from the hardware profile work do you think? delete it then let it be re-found? The only other thing i can think or is a total re-install of windows (it's kinda needed) or buying a sound card (someone is selling a Sound Blaster Audigy2 Zs for 30quid)

You might have luck in completely uninstalling it via the hardware manager in control panel->system. If you completely delete it and reboot XP might just re-enable it for you, or you could try reinstalling the drivers at that point. If not just get a soundcard and try that. I really dislike the AC97 codec though, so my opinion is kinda biased. By the way, there's a Chaintech card for sale in the classifieds for cheap right now that's good for music.

did you try alternatingly enabling/disabling sound in bios?

If all else fails, reinstall windowz on compy86. Sometimes windows just needs a reinstall.

(all I got)