Please tell us the model of your PC, what sound card (onboard or other), version of Windows Media player. What types of music file you are trying to play. Do you have sound at all? Do you have other audio players installed?
Have you looked in device manager (right click My computer, click properties, Hardware tab, click device manager): any yellow exclamation marks? if so describe what they relate to.

The model is a 2400, i believe.

Not sure what type of sound card...or how to find that out...

I'm trying to play any/all type of music files and none work (whether it's from a Yahoo movie trailor, to a music file I have on my harddrive, none are working, in winamp or windowsmediaplayer format).  the only time I hear sound is when I hit a "wrong" button on the computer for example and it makes an "error" sound (a loud BEEP).  I have done into My computer, click properties, Hardware tab, click device manager): and I have found ZERO yellow exclamation marks...

I've done everything I can think of....

 

Thanks for your help! 

Try system information. There should be an icon for it in system tools folder, or you can open it click start, click run, type msinfo32, click OK.
In the window that opens, left pane click on the + next to components, then click on sound device. You'll see info on your sound device(s) in the right pane. When displaying the sound device info you can save it in a text file by clicking file menu, export, the save as box will open so you can give the file a name and choose where to save it. You can open the saved file in Notepad, cut and paste its contents here

Message Edited by JRosenfeld on 04-04-2006 05:23 PM

Sorry, but I'm in the UK, bit too expensive to phone you.
But as you are getting error messages for different things it seems to me that there is some underlying problem with your Windows setup. Maybe some files got corrupted.

So I think the way forward is first to check out your system files. There are two ways to do this:
1. click start, run, type
sfc /scannow
(note space between c and /)
click OK. It may ask for your XP CD. There won't be any messages when it has finished. Reboot and see if you still have problem with msinfo32.

2. The other way is to right click on your C:\ drive icon in My computer or Windows Explorer, click properties, tools tab, in the error checking section click check now. check the box automatically fix system file errors, click start. You'll get a message it will do the check on the next restart. Restart your PC. Before Windows restarts you'll see Chkdsk working, when it has finished it will reboot.
When it reboots, right click on My computer, click manage. The Management console will open. click on the + next to event viewer, click on Applications. I the right pane, look for information logs that correspond in time more or less when you restarted, and that have Winlogon as the source(there will probably be several); double click on each and find the one that has, in the description section, text starting 'Checking file system on C'

Read through that, it may report errors it found and fixed. Unfortunately I don't know of a way of copying and pasting that, so you would need to copy it manually into Notepad if you want to post the result here.

If these problems started recently, the other thing you might try is to use system restore to a time before.

BTW, I take it that this is a stand alone PC, not connected to any network?

Here's what I get when I do exactly as told here:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 289 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 289 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 289 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

  78083932 KB total disk space.
  48634528 KB in 271512 files.
     75148 KB in 15409 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    407564 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  28966692 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  19520983 total allocation units on disk.
   7241673 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
b0 2a 05 00 d3 60 04 00 26 32 05 00 00 00 00 00  .*...`..&2......
9b 15 00 00 00 00 00 00 51 04 00 00 00 00 00 00  ........Q.......
b4 b3 21 0d 00 00 00 00 60 fa 95 be 00 00 00 00  ..!.....`.......
60 7d bb 11 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  `}..............
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 a0 31 43 e0 00 00 00 00  .........1C.....
99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 88 38 07 00 98 24 04 00  ..6......8...$..
00 00 00 00 00 80 6a 98 0b 00 00 00 31 3c 00 00  ......j.....1<..

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

______________________________

Also, when I try playing media player now, I get a differant error message:

Windows Media Player cannot play the file. If the file is on another computer, verify that you are connected to the network. If you typed a path, verify that it is correct. If the problem persists, the server might not be available.

Glad there is some progress :-). It seems at least your sound card is OK since at least you can play sound with Yahoo. Checkdsk did correct some system files and the remaining problem seems to be with Windows Media player itself. We'll take it one step at a time.

What version of Windows media player do you have (in WMP, help menu, about Windows media player)?

If WMP10, did you install that over WMP9 or was it preinstalled on the PC?

When you try to play a sound file and get that error message, are you clicking on it in a playlist within WMP, or do you get that error if in WMP you click File menu, open, and navigate to a sound file, highlight it click open? If opening the file in the latter way works, then it would be likely that the playlists have got corrupted, in which case I would suggest you delete them and rebuild them. If you get the same (or other) error message even when you have pointed WMP directly to the sound file, then something else in WMP has got corrupted or is set incorrectly.

Are the sound file types (.wav, .wma, .mp3 etc.) associated with WMP? (you can check in WMP, tools, file type tab, any checked there are associated with WMP).

BTW I notice that one of your messages (where you told me that you got an error with msinfo) has disappeared from this thread. I did have a 'service unavailable' message when trying to access the board earler this afternoon (UK time), so may be that caused it. But can you now access msinfo?
click start, run, type
msinfo32
click OK

Message Edited by JRosenfeld on 04-05-2006 12:56 AM

Message Edited by JRosenfeld on 04-05-2006 12:59 AM

Message Edited by JRosenfeld on 04-05-2006 01:00 AM

Hey! JRosenfeld

Great, enjoy!

Half this thread seems to have disappeared?
Problem was solved.

Please HELP!  Someone!