Computor Sound Help

[pantherfan 0]

I just formatted my Pc and now I can't play and music at all, my speakers turn on and work with my CD player so it's not them but when I try to play a song I get the message:

Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly.

I don't know much about computors so I asked some friends and they have all told me different things like:

Your sound card is screwed

You have a virus

And something about a sound driver

I honestley have no idea what any of those are so if somebody could explain what they are and what the problem might be that would be a great help.

Thanks

[BK 0]

Turn off your computer, take out the soundcard and place it in another pci slot. If you have onboard sounds, reinstall the drivers and pray.

[pantherfan 0]

Thanks BK

I just got "Unclassified" in I.T in my exams :( so is this something I could do or is it really easy to break something

^^I'm talking about taking the case off and putting the sound card in to a different slot.

BTW what does the sound card look like?

[fedorov#91 0]

Does that not mean u only have to reinstall ur sound driver?

[Vapor 0]

it is your drivers. dont take the sound card out. Go to the device manager and look for the name of your soundcard. Problem is, you are most likely using onboard sound (its built into the motherboard). This means you must lookup your mobo and get the latest drivers for it. You will know which one is your soundcard is because thats where you plug in your speakers. A good way to see if you have onboard memory is to see if it is one big grouping (near all your usb ports, vga port, and all that other good stuff) or if its on its own in a pci slot. If its in a pci slot, then u have a soundcard, just look up what sound card u have and lookup the drivers for it.

[pantherfan 0]

Thanks Vapor, I think my present driver is a 'Legacy' so do I go to a computor shop and ask for a Legacy sound driver? Or is this something I can download? (Legal downloading that is ;))

[Vapor 0]

look it up on the legacy site. You will probably need a model number or something.

[DamnLocust 0]

you can usually get them from the manufacturer's website, or download.com. You need to know the model number, however, which you can find in the Control Panel (under "Sounds and audio Devices" or by opening up "system", then clicking on the "hardware" tab, and then clicking on "device manager")