No sound; no volume control in taskbar

Intel Pentium 4, 2.53 Ghz, using Win98. Sound worked fine until one of the following was installed: Nero 5.0, Kazaa, AT&T Broadband. The CD player volume works; you can listen to CDs. You cannot hear any Windows sounds, cannot listen to downloaded music, cannot listen to any media player, etc. It is frustrating. Any ideas?

 

Start>Programs>Accessories>Entertainment and see if the volume isn’t there. Do you have any icons in the system tray next to the clock?

I think the full Nero has a player of some sort – it might have taken over as your default player and the volume is down – just a guess but you might see what is under Nero in your Start>Programs.

 

I have no icon in the system tray by the clock and when bringing up device manager, sound is grayed out...but yes it is listed under programs>accessories; however when it is clicked, nothing happens.

 

Try this fix.

Go to Start Menu.
Go to Settings.
Go to Control Panel
Go to Sound and Audio Devices

Now, To get your Sound Icon to apper on your task bar, Check "Place Volume Icon in the Task Bar"

Now, About your problem where you can't hear windows sounds, On the same menu, Click Advanced, Now make sure that your wave volume is not all the way down.

 

First things first, what is your sound card?
And is it a pci sound card or an onboard sound chip?

Make sure it is selected as Playback Device in:
Multimedia Control Panel -> Audio

As already suggested, checkmarking "show icon on taskbar" should make the vol control icon appear by the clock.

If there's no device available (other than maybe game compatible device or modem wave), then you need to reinstall your sound drivers.

Other things to check:

Add/Remove Programs Control Panel -> Windows Setup
Multimedia -> Details
make sure "volume control" is checked.
(cd player, media player, audio & video compression should also be checked)


I doubt if Nero was to blame for this.

AT&T broadband . . . hmm

Are there any yellow blobs or question marks listed in Device Manager?
Any hardware devices using the same IRQ ?
(Device Manager -> Computer -> properties)

As for Kazaa, run Spybot Search & Destroy
to remove all the spyware installed by Kazaa.
Use Kazaa Lite instead.

 

I did the very simplest: I reloaded windows and everything seems to be fine. Thanks for all your help.
And Advice