ok, I have an e-machines T6212 (onborad sound card realtek AC'97, AMD 64 Athlon...). I got a virus and had to reinstall windows xp home edition, and for wks on end I had no sound. tried everything... all the troubleshooting help menus, update driver wizards, etc., etc. (Then went even farther and disabled the onbaord sound in the BIOS and a lot of other things that didn't work). I was pretty sure that I need the driver, but couldn't find it. Finally, thanks to help from everyone, I went to the source - Realtek - and downloaded the whole pkg that I needed. This is the link that worked for me:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...tDown=false#AC
(basically go to realtek.com, click on the downloads tab, click the third option which is AC'97 Audio Codec Pkg (Software), agree to terms, and choose your OS)
I chose the express site for Windows xp
downloaded, installed, enabled setting in BIOS
and oh, how sweet to hear sounds coming out of my computer again.
yeah!
(now I can use my ipod again! WhooHoo!)
Thanks.