I am running XP on an HP paviliion 752n. I started having sound problems, couldn't get sound to play. Tried all the Microsoft help sites...did everything...nothing worked. I went and bought a sound blaster card and installed it. Reset the bios to disable on-board sound. Weird result, first time I fired it up it worked fine. After that...dead...right back to where I was. I get an error of a bad direct sound driver whever I try to play any file that has sound. I have no volume control, the audio card is not recognized in the control panel under the icon for sounds and audio, but it IS seen by the device manager which indicates it is working fine! Yet the first time I started up after installing the sound blaster card all was fine...I have tried everything and cannot figure this one out! Sound blaster said I should put a new chip set in my mother board...that didn't make sense to me. Thanks for the help...Ken

Well let's first not forget that, as it worked and now doesn't, your new s/card could be fkd, so see if you can try it out in another PC.

I think the main problem though is that the drivers for the onboard sound are corrupt and are conflicting with your new SBcard.

B4 diabling sound in the bios you shold have un-installed the drivers. So best thing is to un-install everything you can find sound-wise including all the newly installed SB drivers and s/wr. Then boot into Bios to double check sound disablement and ensure you "save settings" as u quit bios. Now re-install new SBlaster and all should be well!!!