Hello all,

 

I believe that i have destroyed my sound card.  I was listening to music from my inspiron 5100 laptop using external speakers for more sound.  I decided to take out the speakers, and when i did all of a sudden my sound died. nothing at all.  i proceed to mess around with the varies audioo programs i have and realized that nothing was working. When i tried to use WMP it informed me that my sound device was not working or was not even installed on my computer.  From there i went on several websites and tried the varies solutions given.  when i tried to install the sound driver for the Sigmatel STAC 9750  AC97 from the resource cd i got a message saying

 

"Invalid operating system, or this installer doesn't support this operating system"

 

as the cd attempted to reinstall the drivers to my system.  From there i attempt to install the drivers from the support.dell.com website.  This time i got  futher in the installation process until

 

"Device object not present, restart the system and run setup again"

 

so of course i restarted the system, but alas to no use.  After more research on the web, i realized that my sound card is probably dead, but for what reason, i do not know. 

 

(sigh) so the question i'm asking is a) do these errors coincide with a sound card dying?, and if so b) what is the next stop to getting it corrected? 

 

since from what i have read, with most laptop the soundcard is intergrated into the  motherboard, am i going to be forced to either buy a new motherboard or buy and exteral sound card for my laptop? and if so, which external sound card is  recommanded? keep in mind i don't need or want anything fancy or expensive.

 

Any feedback on this problem would be much apprecticed. 

 

Tommy