No Windows sounds

[Spacetrucker]

Hi everyone, my first post OK here's my problem. All the standard Windows sounds(Startup, Shutdown, recycle bin etc) stopped working a couple of weeks ago. At the time I put it down to possibly some software I installed(such as Nero which I was trying out a demo of) had changed a setting etc. Nothing else on my system had changed, all my soundcard settings were and are the same. My soundcard is an M-Audio Audiophile 192. My Windows sound scheme has always been set as 'default'. I can actually listen to each individual sound via WMP/Winamp etc but when doing anything that provokes a Windows sound(such as Shut down), I can hear nothing.

When listening to music, playing games etc my sound is working fine. I have actually asked about this problem elsewhere and nobody there could help me fix it. I've also searched it via google, I found a number of people who have had the same problem, but it seems nobody has a definite fix for it. Some of the people I found with the same problem had also ran into out after installing Nero, and some had ran into it after installing the standard Windows updates. I tend to think the only way of fixing it is either a complete Windows reinstall(which I would rather avoid) or editing the registry, which I don't know how to do myself. Despite games and applications working fine, I don't get any sound whilst opening certain things online, such as google video etc. I'm posting this in the hope somebody out there has encountered the same problem and knows a way of fixing it. It's not a massive problem, I mean I can do without the Windows sounds - but I'd rather have them. Any help much appreciated.

[Spacetrucker]

Ahh relief at last I did a search and found this from the user BillyHunt here:-

"Finally I have done it
For anybody else that might happen to be as stuck as I was here's what I had to do.

1. Choose Start > Control Panel and double click Add hardware, then click Next.
Click "Yes, I have already connected the hardware" and click Next.

2. Choose Add a new hardware device at the bottom of the list and click Next.
Select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)", and click Next.

3. Select "Sound, video and game controllers" from "Common hardware types" list and click Next.
Select "(Standard system devices)" from "Manufacturer" and click Have Disk.

4. Click Browse in the "Install From Disk" dialog box and open the folder C:\Windows\System32
Find mmdriver.inf file, select it and click Open then click OK in the "Install From Disk" dialog box. If you see a warning about logo compatibility, just click "Continue Anyway".

5.Scroll down the list and select "Microsoft Audio Compression Manager" click next

6. Reboot"

This worked a treat, all my sounds are now back. Anyone else with this problem - this should fix it.