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No sound, no sound device installed, or controls are greyed out
There is no sound, or at least system sounds including Windows startup and stop sounds are not playing.
The sound control in systray is missing.
Opening Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > displays a properties sheet. The controls for device volume, place volume icon on the task bar, speaker volume, etc on the "Volume" tab are greyed out.
In some cases, sound plays in players other than Windows sounds and Windows Media Player.
Resolution: For Windows XP, open the Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices properties sheet. On the "Audio" tab, for Sound Playback > Default Device click on the 'down arrow' and check to be sure the proper audio device is selected. Typically, the problem will be that something like "modem line 0 playback" has been substituted for the proper audio device.
Changing the selection back to the correct device will fix the problem with no reboot necessary in Windows XP. In other Win OS setups reboot may be required.
This problem occurs frequently enough (often after reinstallation of or changes/updates to Windows) to be described frequently in help forums. The issue and most likely solution has not changed much since 1996 or earlier, when I first encountered it as a novice. The most common cause is the selection of the wrong - typically the modem - device as the default instead of the sound card. The modem cannot play many of the files used for system sounds! Or respond to Media Player sound features. The first step, ALWAYS, is to check and make sure that the right sound device is selected as default in audio device setup.
Unfortunately it seems the advice given in response is often misdirected. Typically, advice is given to uninstall and reinstall the audio card - sometimes recommending physical removal and reinsertion of the card or even its replacement - or reinstallation of the sound card drivers or installation of entirely new drivers for the card. Sometimes users are told they will have to reinstall Windows.
All of these things may - in some cases they apparently do not - result in correction of the basic problem with the selection of the default device. But they seem a lot of trouble to go through, just to change the default device selection from the modem - or some other obsoleted and redundant device - back to the device which should be handling sound on the machine.
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