This seems to be a common problem in the sound driver forum, but none of the solutions that I have seen have helped. I have an ASUS K8N-E deluxe MB with integrated sound: Realtek AC'97, ALC 850 codecs, and cannot get any sound. Device mgr shows everything working properly, no !, etc. I have looked in BIOS and am as sure as I can be that the audio in enabled. (The sound has worked in the past, but I am not sure what I may have done to render it non-functional.) I have updated the drivers for both the Nvidia chipset and the audio drivers, from ASUS, Realtek and Nvidia, all to no avail. The sound does work; there is an ASUS or Realtek applet in the sys tray called Sound Effect that has a speaker test, and sound does come out of the speaker with this test. However, if I go to the Sounds in Control panel, the whole thing is grayed out. No volume control, the Audio tab shows sound playback, MIDI, etc as "No Playback Devices" and is grayed out. Windows xp does not think that there is a sound device installed, althoug it lists it in device mgr and says that it is working. And it does work at some level.