A Conversation for The Gurus' Home Page

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Post 1

little bits of fluff

ok, now i dont know if this is the right place to come to for technical help, if it isnt,im very sorry, and if it is then you very wise fantabulous people/person/whatever might just be able to help me.
i have lost the sound on my computer, the icon has disapeared from the right bottom hand corner of my screen. i am on windows and have been to the device manager, and there are yellow exclamation marks on the sound thingys but there seem to be 'no conflicts'(whatever that means) it is really getting fustrationg as i happen to like sound and music and stuff i am absaloute rubbish when it comes to computers, and if you could help me it would be fantastic
thank you lots and lots and lots, Toni xx (p.s if this IS the wrong place, i am very sorry for you to have had to read my ramblings, which hardly ever make any sense...and if you could direct me to the RIGHT place i would be very grateful, thanks again Txx


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Post 2

Clive the flying ostrich: Amateur Polymath | Chief Heretic.



but I've had the yellow exclaimtion marks before - it means the computer doesn't recognise the driver (or has failed to detect) a driver for a piece of hardware.

if it's XP you are using - you might need to download a compatable driver from the manufacturers website - try running a search on google.

www.google.co.uk
www.google.com

Hopwe that helps.

Clive smiley - ok


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Post 3

little bits of fluff

chers, im on windows 95, and ive got a messsage that says that i have 'no playback devices' mean anything to you?
toni xx


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Post 4

Clive the flying ostrich: Amateur Polymath | Chief Heretic.

Not really. might have to hang a round to one of the more techinal wizard gurus drops by.


I'll leave note on the off-site guru's message board see if anyone else can help.

Clive smiley - ok


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Post 5

Pastey

Eh Up smiley - smiley

No playback devices just means that Windows has no method of playing the sound.

You seem to know a little, after all you know what device manager is. You say that in there you can see the hadware listed, but with a yellow eclamation thing? That means that Windows has succesfully found the hardware, not hard, but it can't get it to work.

If you right click on the device that's got the exclamation mark, and tehn choose properties it should let you know what's wrong with it. 9 times out of 10 it'll be a driver problem.

To fix this, click on the Driver tab, and then on Update Driver, this should open a Wizard to help you (re)install the drivers for that bit of kit. You may need to do this a couple of times for the different bits depending on what hardware it is you are using.

One thing that comes to mind, if this is a new sound card, Windows 95 might not be able to support it.

smiley - rose


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Post 6

Clelba

i'm assuming you've tride restarting the computer, but if not, that could help...sometimes windows gets funny ideas ni its head which disappear when it starts up again smiley - silly
^. .^
= ' =
Gurus
CommunityArtists


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Post 7

little bits of fluff

you sound very clever and wise in the ways of computers. right. now when you say click on 'update driver' i dont actually have that option. i have change driver and thats about it. erm... help? oh, and it doesnt say that theres a problem,(well it says no conflicts anyway, is that the same thing?) which is a bit misleading since it has the little '!' next to the things, in case it helps you help me, there are !s on: 'creative sound blaster 16 or AWE-32' and ' MS Windows sound system compatible...mean any thing atall??
big thanks toni xx


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Post 8

SEF

I agree with Clelba, but would put it more strongly - Microsoft Windows is very very stupid! smiley - cross It has gone downhill in many ways since 3.1 and 95 is not a great version (I've had to deal with nearly all of them since the very early test versions).

One of the underlying problems of all the later versions is that Windows will insist on thinking it can handle plug-and-play and refuses to let you just tell it what the right parameters are. Instead it has to "find them out for itself" each time like some sort of spoiled brat. As Clelba says, sometimes it is simply a matter of rebooting because W has gone temporarily randomly insane - especially after a crash (usually self-induced or from other dodgy MS software). Note it can take two successive reboots to fix itself on occasion.

Other times it matters in which order the hardware is added - eg my external modem has to be powered up before the PC gets very far because W absolutely refuses to believe in it later. Once it has a fixed idea of a device which wasn't there, trying to add it can't use the same address space. So you get multiple entries for the same thing - none of which are actually functional. In the worst cases the whole lot has to be re-installed.

Never swap links around (eg between comms ports or USBs) because W is not as "plug and play" as it thinks it is. Other problems arise from conflicts with installing new software or hardware. I assume you would have mentioned if you had changed your setup though.


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Post 9

little bits of fluff

by the way, big, huge, massive thanks go to Clive for helping me and getting other people to help me and for generally being great, all hail Clive
big thanks, and hugs, toni xx smiley - smiley


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Post 10

Tango

Stupid question, but the plug hasn't fallen out of the back of the computer has it? I don't think that would cause the !'s but it's worth checking.

Tango


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Post 11

little bits of fluff

i dont have speakers, at least thyre not external, theyre inside my computer, so they dont need plugging in, but a good idea anyway, thanks -toni XXsmiley - smiley


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Post 12

little bits of fluff

we have a development, i found where it says where the problems are, and the problems are : one of them is that is is not working properly/ it doesnt have all of the drivers installed it tells me to see my hardware documentation, (code 10) i do not have a hardware documentation!!!!!(whatever it is..)the other one says that the problem is identical, but this time i have to look up code 24, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? WHAT IS THE SOLUTION!!!

big thanks in advance Toni/Toni the ginger from lord of the thingamyblobs


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Post 13

little bits of fluff

we have a development, i found where it says where the problems are, and the problems are : one of them is that is is not working properly/ it doesnt have all of the drivers installed it tells me to see my hardware documentation, (code 10) i do not have a hardware documentation!!!!!(whatever it is..)the other one says that the problem is identical, but this time i have to look up code 24, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? WHAT IS THE SOLUTION!!!

big thanks in advance Toni/Toni the ginger from lord of the thingamyblobs (wot is useless with technology)


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Post 14

SEF

Don't panic. In these circumstances it is often the technology which is useless rather than the user. smiley - winkeye

...on the other hand, there are a few users I could mention... smiley - biggrin


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Post 15

SEF

I should check some precise terminology with you, first. Normally the hardware is called a drive (or card for sound) and the software is the driver. It is entirely possible for you not to have the hardware manuals as many suppliers don't put in all the ones which they should (and many users lose them or don't read them anyway). However, unless they were a very bad supplier they should have given you the installation disks with the correct driver software versions on. You should have the Windows one (probably CD) and at possibly some separate driver ones (usually on 3.5" floppies). Many of the standard drivers will be on the Windows installation disk though.

Have a look round in any packaging/boxes/bookshelves you have and assemble as many manuals and disks as you can find first. Then we'll figure out which ones are which. smiley - smiley


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Post 16

Clive the flying ostrich: Amateur Polymath | Chief Heretic.

smiley - blush


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Post 17

Marjin, After a long time of procrastination back lurking

Another option might be to find the exact name and version of the soundcard, and Google that name plus 'driver'.

Of course you can also try to upgrade to 98SE, as that is a bit less worse than 95.


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