I have lost all sound on my PC.  I am operating WIN 98 2nd Edition withM/S 
Sound driver operating Sys.  The main problem is that I cannot obtain the sound 
icon on my desktop, so I cannot find out if the system is muted.  I have gone 
thru all the sound and audio settings on myPC to no avail.  Can you find 
someone to help.  I can get no help from M/S and my PC is out of warranty.
cjfarley0@yahoo.co.uk

When did you notice this? Did you install new software, hardware, or change the
system configuration in anyway?

Right click on My Computer and select Properties. From there select Device
Manager . Look for anything there with a little yellow '!' under "Sound, video,
and game controllers" then there is some sort of conflict occuring.

Look in your computer's documentation and find out what type of sound card you
have. It might be helpful to download new drivers and install them.

If your problem indeed is that it is muted, then this is the simple method of 
puting back your "sound icon" into your desktop.
Click on Start, go to the Control Panel, select Sound and Audio Devices. 
There, click on the Volume Tab, and there should be something like "Place a 
volume icon on desktop".  Once there you can check if any of your audio 
channels is muted off, specially the "Wave Out/Direct sound" and the "Play 
Control" channel.  If you can't see these channels, then click on "options" 
and afterwards "advanced controls" where you can select which channels to 
display.
Hope this helps! :)

--Toksuri

This happened to me, and I went through all kinds of hoops trying to fix it.
I finally pried the front cover off the speakers to see if something was 
physically wrong with them, and discovered that there is a FUSE in the 
speakers!

The whole problem was caused by one little 50 cent item.
That system is an HP Pavillion package, and the speakers are the ones that 
came with it.  The person who originally had the system had never been able to 
figure out what had happened to the sound. 

See if you can plug some headphones in to the PC's headphone jack and hear the 
system sounds. You may need to also go to the control panel and make sure the 
output volume is on. (There may be a headphone jack on the speakers, but it 
won't work if you have a blown fuse) 
 
 If you can hear the regular sounds of your computer with the headphones, then 
you maight be happy to use it like that! (I was)

Otherwise, unplug your speaker system and carefully unscrew the MAIN speaker's 
back panel to look for a fuse inside. 
(I broke the cover of my speaker when I pried it off, but it works anyway, 
with the new fuse! I just glued the case back together.) 

There is probably a wad of 'cotton', some wires, and a small speaker inside 
there as well.  Make sure not to break any of the wires or pull them apart. A 
fuse usally looks like a little glass tube with metal ends and a metal wire 
inside.  If the fuse is burned, it usually looks that way, or the wire in the 
middle is broken. 

You can just take the fuse out and show it to the clerk at Radio Shack or some 
other electronic outlet and they'll get you what you need. Just insert the new 
fuse, plug everything back in, and the speakers work again.

If none of these other solutions work, you can do the following as a last ditch 
effort. (Please note this only applies if you have a sound card that can be 
removed and isn't onboard you motherboard.)

1. shutoff computer
2. carefully unscrew sound card and remove it
3. start up computer
4. go into windows settings/control panel/click system/click hardware/and 
finally device manager.
5. you'll see a list of various devices, see if you can find "sound,video,game 
controllers.
6. if it's there, click it to open it, there will be a list of devices. if your 
sound card name is there, right click on it, and select uninstall.
(if it isn't there, even better..close these panels back to the desktop.)

7. shutdown machine normally.
8. put the sound card back in, screw in.
9. restart machine

If everything worked, the computer should now detect the sound card as new, and 
attempt to install the drivers (make sure to have your windows cd and sound 
card driver cd handy for this).

I've had this happen before, and reinstalling it seems to help:)

Take care,

Rob

Run the program sndvol32.exe.  It will be in your C:\windows\system folder.