Sometimes there is no sound when running CD-ROMs or in other applications. For example, when running Encarta Encyclopaedia 99 (CD version) in some instances the music and sound plays. However, often a display appears saying ‘Sound Card either in use or not available’ and no sound is played. Any suggestions? (more…)

A weird noise almost like a car alarm comes through my computer speakers. The only way to stop this is to turn off my speakers. My computer is an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ running Windows Me. Can you help? (more…)

After booting up the following message appears: ‘FMCTRL: Fmctrl.exe - Entry point not found. The procedure entry point ThunkConnect32 could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll’. After clicking OK, the same message appears again. Clicking OK once more makes the message disappear and I can happily use the computer as normal. What can I do about it? I am running Windows XP. (more…)

A few weeks ago I sent my Pentium III computer to a computer technician who reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 98. On the return of the computer I reinstalled the SoundBlaster drivers as there was no sound. Now there is an error message which does not go away, even after clicking “Close”. The message is ‘DEVLDR16 caused an invalid page fault in module kernel32.dll at 0187:bff88396′. Shutting down the computer is the only way to close the message. How do I get around this? I am running Windows 98. (more…)

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. (more…)