The sound on my Gateway computer only works every second time the computer boots up. After having some other problems with Windows ME, I upgraded to Windows XP Professional. Most of these problems were fixed, but now the sound won’t work at all! I have tried to rectify the problem through the ‘Sound’ control panel but I can’t find any sound card drivers in this control panel. There is only ‘Intel Integrated Audio’ and ‘Modem playback line #0′. When running some DOS games, the game startup screen detects a SoundBlaster card but it still doesn’t operate. My computer is a Gateway Flex 1.1 GHz running Windows XP Professional, with Boston Digital BA735 speakers. Any help would be appreciated.

Even though the DOS games you have run detect a SoundBlaster card, there is a good chance that you do not have a SoundBlaster sound device in your computer. Back in the days when most DOS games were produced, the dominant type of sound card was a SoundBlaster. So, DOS games would generally think that you have a SoundBlaster card, when the game detects that you have any sound card in your computer. When you are in the ‘Sound’ control panel, ensure that the playback device for sound is set as ‘Intel Integrated Audio’, as this is the sound device on your computer in which we are interested. Because your sound card is integrated into the computer’s motherboard, we may have problems finding the latest driver for the card on the internet. In the past I helped a friend fix their Gateway computer and I seem to recall that the computer came with a CD that contained all of the drivers for devices that were installed on their computer. If you have this CD, have a look at its contents to see if it contains drivers for your sound card. If it does have a driver for your sound card, and also has an INF file (which is the setup information file to tell the installer where to find the files for the driver installation), then you are in luck. Open the ‘System’ control panel, click the ‘Hardware’ tab, and then the ‘Device Manager’ button. Expand ‘Sound, video, and game controllers’. Find your sound card and double-click on it. In the window that appears, click the ‘Driver’ tab. Click the ‘Update Driver…’ button. In the wizard that appears, click the radio button corresponding to ‘Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)’ and click ‘Next’. Then click the radio button for ‘Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install’. A list of drivers will now appear. Click the ‘Have Disk’ button and tell the installer the location of the INF file.

In the unlikely event that your CD does not have the driver for your sound card, or if you do not have such a CD, or the reinstallation of the drivers does not work, then my advice would be to backup all of your essential data and reinstall Windows. This should be fairly straightforward to complete, especially if your Gateway came with a system restoration CD which will reinstall Windows ME and all drivers for devices on your computer (including the sound drivers). After reinstallation, if your sound drivers work, then you can upgrade to Windows XP again.