weird volume control glitch

[tiresias]

Hi all, i've got a weird one(perhaps) whenever i try and play an mp3 or a .wav, the "wave" slider on the volume control zeroes itself, so the sound is playing, but no sound from speakers.
some videos also have no sound, ones that previously did have sound. I have to manually raise the slider with say each song on playlist. I don't have these issues when i am playing a game, i have sound fine. Most of my event sounds work except start windows, and exit windows.

i am using xp pro, with ess tech onboard sound, 333amd, buttloads of ram. this problem is very recent, last week or so. i have downloaded some video codecs(which haven't seemed to do anything at all)in the last few weeks, but that's the only changes recently.
thanks for any tips. Ti.
ps i have a vague recollection of a very similar glitch eons ago on a diff system running 95.

 

[linney]

You could look at going back in time using System Restore. If you were to restore to an earler time you would have to re install any programs downloaded during that period. Have you tried using the System File Checker tool (SFC) to see if you have a corrupt file. I also believe there is a Sound Troubleshooter in Help and Support.

 

[tiresias]

tried your suggestions linney, system restore won't let me restore now, keeps saying to reboot and try again. other stuff has no effect. i think it has to do with divx codec i d-loaded am going to purge that and start over.
thanks for your help though.
joe(tiresias)

 

[Gremlin256]

What drivers are you using for the sound card? Did ESS have a driver for XP??

 

[tiresias]

yeah i've been running Xp pro and 2k pro at home since October. The ESS installed fine on both OSes, till a week ago or so. i am very up to date with virus checking. Norton say everything is kosher. I don't know if it's related, but things got worse, yesterday as i rebooted out of 2k,( which seemed to be having said sound bug too) and i got the "No NTldr" message, and no command prompt.
beeen doing some research on net here at work and that "No NTLDR" message apparently comes up alot after just installing xp as a second os(they are on separate drives) but this is 3 mo. later. i'm back to thinking it's a virus. I will try a boot disk from my a drive tomorrow(working all day today) that supposedly fixes that new bug. But i think i got a bad divx driver\infected divx driver. any one has any ideas lemme know , thanks for your help. -joe(tiresias)