Sound, not soundcard, problem

[Gustavus]

I have several systems, all running Windows XP with SP2 installed and all have Turtlebeach Santa Cruz soundcards in them. The point is, this is a very familiar combo to me. One of the systems has developed an odd sound problem. It showed up as no system sounds -- like Windows log on or off etc. -- and no sound on net links like the video clips on CNN news. I figured the sound card was the problem so I went into Device manager which showed the device working properly. Even so I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest Santa Cruz drivers with no effect. Swapping sound cards with a known working sound card had no effect, so it wasn't the sound card. Not surprisingly, audio CD's play perfectly normally, and if I go to any wav file and click on it, the Windows media player opens and the sound plays normally -- like the Windows log on and off files.

If I go to Sounds and Audio Devices in the Control panel the triangular tab to play a sound is greyed out. The full sounds menu is shown -- the default Windows menu of sounds -- but unlike all of the other machines, can't play any of them. The other thing is that there is no audio on any web page I have tried. Video is fine though. I have searched everything related to sound I could think of and have found no place where sound is muted or disabled, but clearly something is preventing sounds from playing normally. I repeat the wav files involved all play normally if clicked directly -- just not in the Sounds and Audio Devices menu.

I am hoping that someone here will know where the block could be

 

[Fardringle]

A bit of Google searching (search for "Windows system sounds not working") came up with this answer that supposedly worked for several people with the same problem:


Click on the start button. Go to Run Type in regedit

Once registry editor has opened up left click on the Hkey_Current_User key.
In the right hand area you will find a binary string value that says
Name: (default)
Type: REG_SZ
Data: VALUE NOT SET

Now if your data does NOT say value not set simply right click on the
default string and delete. Windows will immedately create you a new
one. Restart your computer and you should hear sounds.

 

[Gustavus]

Fardringle
Thanks for the reply. I think you were referring to HKCU/Control Panel/Sound. If so, the REG_SZ value is (value not set)

I searched Google for a couple of hours yesterday with lines about system sounds etc. before posting here. I even found one long registry edit that had helped some people so I exported the registry, imported the twenty or so lines of edits and still no sound. I then restored the registry from before the edit. It has to be some straightforward setting that needs to be changed. But what?

 

[Gustavus]

Problem solved! On TechSupport forums there were several threads on similiar problems, one of which concluded with what one user had found. His antivirus had deleted from Windows/System 32 the file msacm32.drv. He copied the file from another source and then copied it to his System 32 folder and sound was fully restored. I did a search on the machine that was having the sound problem and msacm32.drv was nowhere to be found. A search on any of the other machines showed it in the System 32 folder just as it should be. It is only a 20 KB file so I copied it to a floppy on one of the machines with sound and then copied it into the System 32 folder on the one that did not. All problems are fixed. System sounds play as they should, I can play audio on net links and the sound menu in Sounds under Conrol Panel now has an active play icon. Very simple fix -- but one I would never have found for myself. I am posting the information here in case someone's search for help happens to hit this thread.