"Lost" sound-cards.?

My wife just got two computers from the job she just left.


They are both about one year old.


They both run XP Pro.


The company wiped them both before letting her have them.


So, both machines have vertually nothing left on them - Not even Word.


They have both misplaced their sound-cards.


She watched the guy do the wipe, and knows he didn't open the cabinets.





Do you think I should just re-install XP pro and that will get the sound-cards back?





Thank you.


I bow to your greater knowledge.

"Lost" sound-cards.?
you can use the device manager to see if the cards are properly installed and try to get xp to reinstall them. Here's how you do it. Go to "My Computer" and right click on it's icon. Choose "manage" when the box pops up look on the left at the catagories. Under the first category "system tools" at the bottom should be the device manager. If there is nothing like that listed you'll have to expand the menu by clicking on the "+" sign next to it. Click on the device manager and it will pull up everything that is installed on your computer in catagories. Find the heading "sound, video, and game controllers". expand this out by clicking on the "+" sign. See if there are any warning boxes up "yellow triangles with exclamation points in them. If there are then these devices weren't properly installed. To get windows to try and reinstall them right click and choose uninstall. After uninstalling them all, restart the computer. Windows should now detect new hardware and try to find drivers to fit.


If this doesn't solve the problem it's possible that the correct drivers aren't included with windows and you'll need to find out some things. Who made the computer and what model it is. By going to the manufacturers site you should be able to go under a support or download section and get the drivers you need. You'll have to download them and run the file. Follow the instructions that come with the installer and it should fix the problem.


There is no need to reinstall windows just to fix a soundcard issue. This could just lead you to wasting a couple of hours, and a windows registration just to find out that windows doesn't come preinstalled with that driver and you're back a square one.


Hopefully this helps.
Reply:well i would try to go into the control panel


once there click "add hardware"


then ull see a welcome window and it say put in cd blah blah, push to th next screen


itll search......


if it finds somthing install it if not click "yes. i conected it"


the top ones that have X or a ! need to be installed or fixed. try and fid one that has somthing to do with sound (audio driver, soundcard)


click on that and see
Reply:Hi,





That should not be a major problem as XP should recognise the hardware on the computer.





On the few things it does not recognise you can just download the drivers from the manufacturers site.





If you have problems regarding the make of the sound card just look in control panel, sounds and audio icon the card should be listed there.





A quick search on the net should find the drivers.





Arnak