Help

[Billy P]

Hello everyone, about 6 or 7 weeks ago my computer crashed. I ended up doing a system restore on it. that brought back ot least the operating system. I lost a lot of probably irreplaceable music, and pictures. The biggest thing is now I can't get any sound at all I have checked and the speakers are plugged in, I've tried my headphones, done everything that my daughter and I can think of and can't get any sound. I did say something about installing drivers, whatever that is. If any one can help us we sould sure appreciate it a bunch. Also any ideas about how to maybe get my old music back. Thanks in Advance Billy P

[hivemind]

Hi Billy.

System Restore shouldn't have deleted your music or pictures, so my guess is that they're in a different profile now somehow.

Go to My Computer > C: > Documents and Settings and start looking through the folders in there, particularly in the [user name] > My Documents folders and see if you can find that stuff. If that doesn't find them, try Start > Search and have it look in C: for: *.jpg That's a wildcard search that will find all the pictures on your computer. Just look for names that look familiar, note where they are, then go there and move them to where you want them.

The sound issue, first, make sure you don't have the mute box checked in the volume settings. Go into your Control Panel and open up the Sounds and Audio Devices section, and make sure the mute box is unchecked.

If it is, take a look in your Device Manager. To get there, right-click on My Computer and choose Properties at the bottom. Go to the Hardware tab, and click the Device Manager button. What you're looking for in there is anything with a question mark or an exclamation point on it. That indicates a system device (like your sound card) that Windows thinks is malfunctioning, doesn't have drivers for, or is otherwise misconfigured or misinstalled. If you find something like that, the first thing to try is to just right-click on it and Update Driver. If that fails to help, try right-clicking on it and Uninstall, then restart your computer and see if it installs automatically (and correctly) this time.

If neither of those two options does it, you probably don't have the correct driver software for it. This is where I can't tell you exactly where to go. ALl I can tell you is to try and find out what kind of device it is exactly, then use Google to find a driver for it. Often the component or computer manufacturer's site will have these for you, particularly if your computer is from a large company like Dell, Gateway or IBM.

Let us know if any of that fixes you, or if you need more help.