Recently my computer was upgraded to Windows XP Home Edition. Everything is working well, except on two occasions the sound has been lost. On the first occasion I took the computer to a technician who reloaded the driver, which fixed the problem. However, the problem has reoccurred. I have done all the usual things like checking connections. Can you suggest what may be causing this annoying issue?

Unfortunately this is quite a common problem after upgrading to Windows XP. Firstly we should check whether the sound card is still installed in Windows. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Control Panel’. Make sure the control panel is being displayed in ‘Classic View’ (as opposed to Category View). You can switch by clicking the ‘Switch to Classic View’ link in the left-hand pane. Open the ‘System’ control panel. In the window that appears, click the ‘Hardware’ tab and the ‘Device Manager’ button. Expand ‘Sound, video and game controllers’ and make sure your sound card is still installed. If your card is not installed, Windows seems to have lost the device installation. In this case, reinstall the drivers and contact me again for further advice.

Assuming the device is still installed, make sure the sound card entry in the Device Manager doesn’t have an icon with an exclamation point (which indicates a device problem) or a red cross (which indicates the device is disabled). If either of these are true, right-click on the device and select ‘Properties’. This will make the device properties appear, where you can try to resolve the problem.

If the device appears to be installed correctly without problems, close the Device Manager and associated control panel windows. Then, double-click the speaker icon in the system tray to show the Volume Control window (if you don’t have the speaker icon in the system tray, open the ‘Sound and Audio Devices’ control panel and tick ‘Place volume icon in the taskbar’). Make sure that all the controls are not muted. Go to the ‘Options’ menu and click ‘Advanced Controls’. Click the ‘Advanced’ button that appears underneath the Play Control. In the window that appears, make sure ‘Digital Output Only’ is not ticked. Click ‘Close’.

Should none of these suggestions fix the problem, then the most likely cause is the drivers you have are not compatible with Windows XP. This is the case with quite a few devices. So, you should check the manufacturer’s website for information on compatibility issues with Windows XP, and whether there are any updated drivers for Windows XP.