Hi guys, okay I have a Windows XP Pentium D w/ a 3.0 GHZ processor, 2 gigs of ram, GeForce 7800 TI, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS..
Anyway, I've had an issue with my sound recently not working. I called Dell Technical Support for a different (resolved) issue, and during the process of trying to fix it they had me do an XP System Restore to a point about 2 weeks before the date I did it. When my computer rebooted after the restore, my sound wasn't working. I looked in my Device Manager, and it showed 2 Unknown devices that didn't have drivers installed under my "Sound, Video, and Game Controllers."
I told Windows to reinstall the drivers for these devices, and found out what they are... one is called "Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter." and the other is called "Microsoft Kernel Wave Audio Mixer." when I try to install these drivers, either by letting it automatically find a driver for them or by searching the Windows CD, it finds a driver and starts to install it, but then it gives me an error message saying "Driver is not intended for this platform."
I don't know what these files are or what they do, but I do know that since they haven't been working, if I go to "Sounds and Audio Devices" in my control panel, I find that the system isn't recognizing my SB Audigy 2 ZS as a playback device. It says "No Audio Device" under the "volume" tab and under the "Audio" tab and under "sound playback" it says for "Default Device: No Playback Devices." It does recognize my card for recording and MIDI playback for some reason though.
I've tried reinstalling the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS drivers, that didn't fix the problem and the Device Manager shows the drivers are working fine and are recognized. I also tried removing the Microsoft Kernel devices, and upon reboot the System finds new hardware but still can't install those drivers for them.
Anyway, I'm at a loss for what to do, any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Dell said that I should just reinstall Windows, but that would delete all of my many gigs of music, moves, and games, and it'd be a REAL hassle to back all of those files up. Anything less drastic would be strongly preferable. Thanks a lot for any help on this.
