Thanks for the quick reply Barbara.
I tried reinstalling the chipset driver and the Audio Driver as you mentioned, but I still get 'No Audio Device' under volume tab for Control Panel/Sound and Audio Devices. Under the Audio and Voice tab, the only device I can choose is the Modem #0, the sound device is not available.
Under Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/SoundMax Integrated Digital Audio, the device status reports it is working properly. I am not sure what to make of the I/O range and IRQ, which are E000-E13F and 17 respectively. There are no conflicting devices.
Choosing Audio Devices under the property tab, the status reported is "Driver is Enabled but has not been started".
I am out of idea at this point
What confound me is that even a third party PCI sound card is not working. Is it possible that something in the motherboard or OS that is not starting the audio device? How can I further diagnose?