No sound - multimedia icon missing from control panel

I have suddenly lost ALL sound .......cannot play audio CDs or any WAV file ......when I look for the multimedia icon in my WIN98 control panel it's no longer there .!!!.........I had a "cannot find a device file ...." error last week which I fixed by installing/removing network components, as recommended on the MS Product Support website ...but no other messing with settings has occurred. The WIN98 Help troubleshooter of course points me at the multimedia/sounds icon in control panel ...which just ain't there ..is there any way I can simply restore it with the sounds without messing with .INI files and registries ? The windows sound .WAV files are all still there but none will play ....I get "MMSYSTEM326 No wave device that can play files in the current format is installed" message.

 

Is the C:\Windows\System\mmsys.cpl file present?

Try running (from the Start > Run box) the following line.
control.exe mmsys.cpl
AND/OR
control.exe c:\windows\system\mmsys.cpl

You should also try this method from the Run box.

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL c:\windows\system\mmmsys.cpl


Do these methods start the control?

 

Thanks- I'll try these suggestions. I think the mmsys.cpl file is the problem - I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the multimedia components and got a RUNDLL error "error loading mmsys.cpl one of the library files needed ro run this application cannot be found" so I guess I may have to extract it and reinstal.

 

Unfortunately none of the suggested actions worked. Th mmsys.cpl file is definitely there - in C:\windows\system..but the poblem seems to be - to quote the error message when reinstalling the mutimedia component of windows "one of the ibrary files needed to run this application (mmsys.cpl) cannot be found".
How can I find out WHICH library file is "missing" and reinstall it ? Should I attempt to reinstal mmsys.cpl in some way ?

 

Go to add/remove programs, windows, scroll down to multimedia....is the box checked? If so uncheck it, restart windows, then go back and recheck it....you may want to scroll thru the individual items to be sure you've got them all checked.

You'll probably need the windows installation cd too.

 

OK - I thought I'd tried that - but maybe without shutting down and restarting windows in between so I'll follow your isntructionst o the letter .........it's when I re-check the box and it tries to "reinstal" multimedia that I find out one of my library files is "missing" ........should I also see if congigsafe might restore something useful .??....looking through the MS error messages maybe by uninstalling something it inadvertently deleted a library fil ...problem is I don't remember uninstalling any programmes in the last 2 weeks !

 

Nope - sorry AcaCandy - didn't work !

 

tried running system file checker to replace whatever files it is that were deleted??

 

Thanks Hairy - I wondered if that might wrk - problem is I don't know what files were deleted ........any way I canfind that vital piece of info out ???

 

You can just run it, it should tell you what's messed up.....

Another thought though, if this just happened, you may be able to do a registry restore and fix the problem.....

Boot to a c: prompt, then type scanreg /restore

and press enter

Is there a date prior to the problem, but not too far back?

 

OK folks we have sound again ! SFC identifed 2 corrupted and 2 canged files (including CWDAUDO.DRV) - so I restored all and now I have sound. Thanks for the tip. Strangely enough I still have no multimedia icon in my control panel. rior to restoring the files through SFC I restored previous configs from 3 weeks ago using Config safe and the multimedia icon reappeard - but wihout any "sounds" tab. Strange ? Of course now I have DIFFERENT problem, as 2 games, including ACtua Golf, won't run as a DDRAW.DLL file is unaccountably missing. hey ho ...........what else is there to do on a wet day.

 

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