I recently bought an EMachines, ETower 600cd, secondhand. Everything works fine apart from the sound. It is a Intel Celeron 600Mhz, 128Mb RAM, Windows ME installed and the motherboard is a TriGem - Cognac 20000731 with onboard graphics and sound. I have no sound apart from a click through the speakers on boot up. In Control Panel under Sound Video and Game Controllers I have AC 97 Driver for Intel(r) 82801AA contoller listed as well as a gane port and a MPU-401 MIDI Device. I have re-installed just about every driver I can think of and the system tells me I have the latest version installed. In Control Panel/Multimedia Properties/Audio the Sound Playback, Sound Recording and the MIDI Music Playback boxes are all greyed out and under the Sound tab the Volume is also greyed out.

I have run SysSpec and under the Sound button it shows "Sound Card - Not Detected". If I click on the Show Sound Settings button it dispalys an error message "Error in Shell32.dll - missing entry".

It won't even play a CD through WMP. I get an error message OxCOOD1199 - cannot play the file.

The only sound I have managed to play is by using the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and under the Test Direct Music feature, with the port set at AC97 Soundcard it play really well.

I've tried everything I know to solve this including uninstalling and reinstalling various components but nothing seems to work. I have even tried a cheap C-Media soundcard in PCI slot but again, nothing.

Hope you can help.

Hi there Batanga, welcome to PCHF.

Have you reinstalled windows after you bought it, or are you using the 'old' install?

It sounds like it could be a windows problem, and installing windows fresh on a second hand pc is always a very good idea.

Hi Joe5

Thanks for your reply. I bought this thing at a boot sale so no Windows disc with it and I don't have another Windows ME disc that I could use either. Is there anything else I could do.

It will be almost impossible to fix this without an XP Cd. As you have tried 2 different sound cards then we can almost safely rule out a PCI or "Card" error, as Joe said, this points to the operating system. Did you install the drivers that came with the PCI card ? Did Windows detect and display the card in the Device Manager?

Thanks for your reply Hengis. The operating system is Windows ME. Yes I did install the drivers supplied with the sound card but got a couple of error messages as I did so. Yes, the new sound card was recognised and listed in device manager.

Error messages whilst you were installing the drivers huh? Please can you post the full make and model number of the soundcard.

I have another pc with Windows 98SE installed, again it was a secondhand machine without OS disc. Can I make a copy of that and install Windows 98SE on the rogue pc. If it is possible can you tell me how to do it.