Inspirion 1200 "no audio output device is installed"

I <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute character removed as per TOU> up, throwing myself at your mercy!

So while moving vids to a flash drive the fourth of fifth one gave me an alert that the drive was suddenly write protected. I hunted around online for a solution and the most common suggestion was to mess around in regedit.exe.

I assume this was a disaster because I'm an idiot. I changed a value from (value not set) to 0, rebooted the laptop, and my audio has not worked since.

I have followed instructions from other posts, but problem not solved.

Under Device Manager there was not a path for "sound, video and game controller" until I attempted to add legacy hardware, problem is I have no idea what sound manufacturer im supposed to have. Downloaded one at random because I'm desperate, and like I said, an idiot. Now "sound video and game controller" has a pathway but it only contains the bunk hardware I picked randomly.

No attempt at downloading new drivers for audio or sound card has helped.

And, to my horror, there were no System Restore points at all. I'm not sure if I failed to set up automatic restore points or if messing in regedit.exe doomed me.

Any help would be much appreciated, I'll answer any questions I can!