I recently had to fix the MBR on C drive, which required screwing around in the BIOS, but I ended up resetting to defaults and here's the problem:
I've recently upgraded iTunes and installed new software for my Logitech WebCam, but somewhere after fixing the MBR, I lost all my sound; I'm not sure exactly when I lost the sound, but it was working before the MBR was messed up.
There are no drivers loading in the Sound, Video & Game Controllers section of device manager...they all show a "!".
I have XP Pro, SP3 and an asus A8N-SLI Premium, which has on-board sound; I have tried reinstalling the drivers for the sound card; I've tried uninstalling all the devices in the SVGC section, but they won't uninstall; I've triple checked my BIOS and the sound is enabled, I even turned it off and turned it back on again; lastly I tried a system restore and still no luck.
If the devices have a yellow ! next to them, there is a conflict. You likely don't have any or don't have the correct drivers installed.
If you have onboard sound, you don't need drivers for a soundcard. You simply need to go to here. You'll want the first download.
http://support.asus.com/download/d [...] me=A8N-SLI Premium&SLanguage=en-us