Ok here's the rundown, I went out and bought a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound card for my HP Pavillion 7845 and everything ran smoothly until I plugged in the speakers because you see, the sound was extremely soft. I turned the volume all the way up in every multimedia program I have such as Windows Media Player, Quick Time, Real Player, and the multimedia handler that came with the card. So I tried to uninstall but there is apparently NO WAY to uninstall it. So I went to the hardware profile and removed the sound card but now not even the default card that came with the system is working. I want to uninstall and start from scratch (i.e reinstall the card and drivers) but I'm really not sure what to do next. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ 07-23-2004, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: Piestrider ]

Before installing any external card, you need to disable the internal card first, otherwise it will either create a device conflict or might hang the system.

To "get back" you old onboard soundcard, you need to download the driver, in this case, from HP's website and install the driver. After restarting, the internal soundcard should be able to take control of the media devices.

Or IF WinXP already has a built in sound driver for the internal soundcard, what you need to do is to go to control panel and remove all hardware driver, then restart the PC and hopefully XP will restore or reinstall the drivers back.

Control panel -> System -> Hardware(tab) -> Device Manage (button) -> Sound, video and game controllers

Remove all sound devices and restart PC. If the problem persists, remove all audio codecs as well.

[ 07-23-2004, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]

Thank you! I'll get to work on it right away.

Well I went to Hp's website and got the runaround looking for drivers for a sound card to a 3 year old computer and they didn't have any so I'm really not sure now. I'm considering putting in the HP recovery disk and seeing if that restores the old sound card.
OH yeah, and before I do all this, do you think that a botched installation of the new sound card is what caused the sound to come out much quieter than it should be or do you think that its something else entirely? (like the fact that they reccomend surround sound speakers whereas i'm only using the 2 that came with the system)

[ 07-23-2004, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: Piestrider ]

Have you checked around for soundcard settings? The master volume control just might be low... at least, from this card's perspective.

If you have the HP Recovery discs the sound driver will be there. There are two components to the Restore Discs.

You can put the first disc in and reboot, which will allow you reinstall on top of your existing installation or reformat and reinstall.

Or you can choose the restore option from the Program List(it is under some HP heading). This will ask for the second or third disc and after inserting, it will ask you which programs/drivers to restore.

There are many reasons why the sound came out softly than usual, for example:

1. Device conflict - You have to disable the onboard soundcard first. This is done either by altering the jumper setting or via BIOS setup.

2. Speaker - Some soundcard requires speakers with higher amplification power to pump up the volume. This is because these cards have a weaker internal amplifier to reduce noise.

3. Master volume - Try to set the master volume higher.

And etc. etc. If you really want to solve the problem, you will need patience to tackle all the possible factors, starting with device conflict.

Well guys, things have taken a serious turn for the worst. I used the Windows recovery disk to acquire the old driver and things seemed to be running smoothly. Then I remembered that I had aborted the installation at 95% because the computer crashed so then i thought DUH all I have to do is reinstall the software for the new sound card. So it went completely through the entire installation process and it prompted me to restart the computer so I did. I was so excited because I thought that I had fixed the problem but then when it was running through the boot up cycle an error came up that read
"Invalid System Disk
replace and then press any key"
So I thought, oh, there must be a disk in the drive but to my dismay there was none. This was not the standard Non-System disk error, this error was asking for a disk which doesn't even exist as our Windows ME never came with a floppy disk backup.
I've checked the internet (at someone else's house since my computer isn't working) and i've searched the problem and the internet says that it could be a virus but how would I scan for a virus if I can't even load windows. I also got a few other solutions but i'm wondering what you guys' opinion is.

ok heres the newest update... I took out the old new sound card and basically threw it in the trash and then ran the recovery program (for the second time today) and through that I was able to get into windows. Now i'll admit, scandisk won't work and neither will Norton Antivirus and when I tried to load the control panel the computer crashed big time but my games work so its all good. Basically my computer is patched together now and works *enough*. So I wanna thank you guys for all your help, it was very, well... helpful :D