When I formatted my HDD I lost sound so I reinstalled my sound card. The result was conflict with the PCI Bus. This in turn changed my display setting to 600×400 and 16 colours. I uninstalled the sound card. The display returned to 256 colours and everything works but of course no sound. Can you help me to solve this problem?

Device conflicts can also be a rather tricky subject to deal with. It is odd but not surprising that you are also having a problem with your display because I am guessing that your display adapter is in a PCI slot in your computer. As the conflict involves the PCI bus, it is causing your display to act strangely. It is probably fair to say that the PCI bus has preference over your sound card which is why we will try and resolve your problem by changing your sound cards setting rather than the PCI Bus settings. Start by putting your sound card back into your computer. Once you have done that and booted Windows up, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Control Panel’ > ‘System’ and click on the ‘Device Manager’ tab. In the large tree box, click to expand the heading ‘Sound, video, and game controllers’ (or alike), and double click the conflicting device (in this case, your sound card - whatever it may be named). In the box that appears, click the ‘Resources’ tab and you should see a ‘Resource Settings’ box. Underneath that box, you should also see a ‘Conflicting device list’ box. In this box, see if the PCI Bus (with which your sound card is conflicting) has a listing for ‘System Reserved’ (NB: If there are no conflicts listed in the box, stop here and do not proceed any further. Windows may have already resolved the problem and you just need to reboot your computer, alternatively you may not be viewing the correct device). If there are conflicts listed in the ‘Conflicting device list’ box, exit out of that box and go back to the list of devices (on the console tree). Double click the ‘Sound, video, and game controllers’ (or alike) again and see if there are multiple instances of your sound card installed. If there is, or you are still having the conflict problem, remove all instances of the device by clicking on it and deleting them. Once you have done this, reboot your computer and Windows should recognise your sound card and reinstall it (if Windows doesn’t automatically recognise it, use the ‘Add New Hardware’ wizard in the ‘Control Panel’). If you still have the conflict, you may need to configure your sound card to use different resources. Go back into the ‘Device Manager’ and the ‘Resource’ tab for your sound card. Look in the ‘Conflicting device list’ to see which resource setting(s) conflict with your PCI Bus and in the ‘Resource Settings’ box, click the entry in the ‘Setting’ column which corresponds to the one in the ‘Conflicting device list’. Take the tick out of the ‘Use automatic settings’ box and click a different configuration in the ‘Setting based on’ drop-down box. Click the ‘Change Setting’ button and then scroll through the different ‘Value’ settings checking the ‘Conflict information’ for each one of the settings. If you find a setting which does not conflict with any other devices, click ‘Ok’, close the ‘Device Manager’, and restart your computer. However, if you can’t find a setting which doesn’t conflict with any other devices, click the ‘Cancel’ button. If you reach this point without solving the problem (ie. we are back to square one) I can only suggest that you download the latest drivers from the manufacturers website. If that doesn’t solve your problem, contact the manufacturer for more help. You should be able to do this through email from their website.