Gaming Weird problem with soundcard

[Wabsta]

Okay, a few days ago, I was playing the sims2 on my Girlfriend's computer.
Well, I tried. But it just came stuck while in a loading screen.

The computer wasn't totaly stuck, cause I know that Taskmanager was running in the background when I pressed cntrlaltdel. Because when I alttabbed, I got the normal mouse again etc.
But since I couldn't do anything anymore, I decided to just turn the computer off by pressing the power button for a few seconds.
After that I turned the computer on again, and I started sims2 again.

It didn't even come to loading screens or w/e.
Because when I started it, BAM bluescreen.
The Bluescreen disappeared just as fast as it appeared, so I couldn't write down the errorcodes in it.

Now comes the freaky part.
The sound was gone!
When going to Controlpanel>Sound, it said "No Audiohardware".

So, I went to reinstall the onboard soundcard with device manager, downloaded the latest drivers for it etc.
But it still didn't work. Checked the BIOS, and the onboard sound was turned on.

Then I brought an old sound card that I had in my computer untill just a few days ago, and before that it was in my girlfriends old computer.
And I'm very sure it's not broken.

So, I installed the soundcard in the PCI(or PCI-E, whatever that thing is called) slot.
And I installed the SAME drivers as I had used on my computer at home.
And everything went fine, the computer recognized it.

Except for Controlpanel>sound.
Which means, there is still no sound at all.

I already tried reinstalling drivers, turning onboard sound off in the BIOS etc.

But it just doesn't work.
Oh, at DXDIAG, when I try to test it, it gives me an error that says "No driver installed". But I'm VERY sure that I did that.

So, wtf is wrong with this computer, and how can I fix it?

EDIT: Oh, I'm running windows XP btw.
Motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI (where the onboard soundcard is)
PCI sound card: CMi8738

 

[FAST6191]

Before I rag on ASUS* can I suggest you grab a linux live distro (any should be good as long as it is modern) and see if you can get the soundcard working in that. Fiddling with drivers could get hairy and I (and I assume others) will want to be certain before going down this route.

*Their inability to consider build quality means they have been the bane of my existence for months now, lucrative but annoying.

 

[zidane_genome]

Looks like you screwed the pooch on your gf's computer... backup everything you can, bookmarks, files, mp3s... get a list of all the programs she has, and format...

reinstall the sob, and pray she forgives you!


second thought... tell her you need to do it because it'll make her computer run faster... yea... tell her your taking time out of your day to help her with her computer, and the least she could do is give you a little sucky sucky while it's installing... haha... take a bad situation, and make it better!

 

[Wabsta]

I was already afraid that I had to format, ah well, I could also look at the bright side of it

I could try a linux live distro, but I could also just reinstall windows, and just pray that it works.

 

[Maz7006]

did a try system restore before, it seems that that hard reset blew away some files, you should be able to get them back with system restore. Reinstalling drivers etc etc, but what if there are some system files that just got wiped, you'll be able to get them back with system restore hopefully, just try that before formatting.