Realtek '97/Win XP drivers problem

smallinson

D-A-L Newbie

It's a long story, but although WMP plays OK, as do other installed players, there is deep-rooted audio problem somewhere on my PC: no Windows sounds, Windows Sound Recorder has play and record controls grayed out, no sounds on Flash websites like YouTube. I have reinstalled AC 97 drivers, gone through the repair-Win XP routine using the Windows CD. (I even have a separate partition with a virgin WinXP installation and Realtek drivers - that works fine - but I don't want to use it because of the hassle of reinstalling all the programs, settings etc.) I've used MSCONFIG to switch off other drivers at startup - doesn't work. I've installed Win XP SP3 as well. Hardware manager shows no issues - apparently everything is working fine, except it isn't. So I'm concluding there's a conflict or other problem with my WinXP installation, given the strange behaviour of the sound recorder. Short of starting again with a fresh Win XP installation (and losing all my settings, programs etc), is there anything I can do to check for conflicts or corrupted Windows files? Any other bright ideas? Any diagnostics I can run that will look for audio conflicts, or incorrect Win XP files or settings?
Thanks