The other day my xp crashed for no reason. The power went out and then it just stopped working. Took it apart and found that the hard drive crashed. I've got an old old hard drive that would suffice for now. Refomatted it because it had windows 3.1 on it and it wouldn't load correctly. Once it was formatted windows 98se was installed because the hard drive is WAY small and it just barely fits on it. So then got it going and then the internet wouldn't work becase, to make a long story short, a driver was missing that I had to find off the internet from another computer and transfer in onto the formatted drive. Now that I've got half of what I want to use, I can't figure out the rest (the internet and some music). I can't get any sound to work for the life of me. Using the genric windows media player...cause that's all that will fit...it says it can't find the hardware to play the file or the file's missing or some bulljive like that. So i've been trying to get the sound card/drivers/anything to do with sound to make it work and still nothing. The sound card is attached to the motherboard so I can't take it out to see what model number and all that fun stuff is. All i can see on it is foxconn (which i've tried looking on their website for a driver and no luck. I've gone to sound blaster and dloaded a bunch of drivers from them and still no luck. I've gone into control panel and added all the creatve sound cards that I figured might work and still no avail. And for a couple of drivers i try intalling it says that the best driver is already installed...but it still doesn't work!! I've removed all of the sound cards that I've tried and now it's saying there's no hardware. Also in add hardware i've got some things with the yellow exclaimations on them (PCI communication device, PCI multimedia audio device, PCI system management bus, and unknown device) I've tried doing things with those and still nothing. I've been trying to get the sound to work for at least 8 combined hours and maybe even more. Now at this point I have no idea where to go and am about to throw the computer out the windows. Any help would be greatly appreciated because as I said, i've run dry out of ideas.

Download and run EVEREST Home Edition. That will tell you the model number of your motherboard so you can get the proper drivers for your chipset. If you want some help post back with that info.

Thanks for the help.
I got everest goin and was looking around but it's lookin like i'm gonna be needing some help. I wasn't quite sure where to find the model number of the mother board so i took this report from everest.
Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 1600 MHz (16 x 100)
Motherboard Name Intel Pendleton D845PT (3 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset Intel Brookdale i845D
System Memory 256 MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (03/14/02)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Printer Port (LPT1)
Hopefully that will show it but I'm thinking it's not going to
Where at can I find the model number for it?
Also here's the chipset info if this might be needed for anything
[ South Bridge: Intel 82801BA ICH2 ]

South Bridge Properties:
South Bridge Intel 82801BA ICH2
Revision / Stepping 05 / B5
Package Type 360 Pin EBGA
Package Size 2.3 cm x 2.3 cm
Core Voltage 1.8 V

AC'97 Audio Controller:
Audio Controller Type Intel 82801BA(M) ICH2
Codec Name Analog Devices AD1885
Codec ID 41445360h
S/PDIF Output Not Supported

Chipset Manufacturer:
Company Name Intel Corporation
Product Information http://www.intel.com/products/browse/chipsets.htm
Driver Download http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/index.htm

When I tried going to the driver download (that's shown above) I wasn't sure which chipset I need to be looking at, if any at all.
Thanks again for the help.

Your mobo is a Intel Pendleton D845PT. AC'97 Audio Controller is the standard Intel (and many other) driver for your sound. You can get your drivers here. Number 4 is what your looking for. These all apply to 98SE, so don't use them if you get XP back on that machine.

Depending on whether you have XP Home or Pro you can go here and pick your OS and get your mobo drivers for the time you get XP going again. Bookmark the driver page or download and burn what you feel you need. I prefer to use the mobo makers drivers rather than let the OS run things.

alright, so i loaded that it seems like i'm getting closer but still no sound. when trying to open wmp or even sound recorder, it says there's no sound device installed. then it says to to go add new hardware to add one and in there i notice a yellow ! on the PCI multimedia audio device, i know that this is just the standard one but now what?
thanks for the help

Download number 6 in the link where you got the Audio Driver. Disable any running programs and go to Start>Run and navigate to the downloaded .exe file and run it. Cross your fingers.

......still nothing
was it the driver I dloaded earlier cause i'm thinking i need a driver to get it working.
i dunno???

If you mean the drivers you describe in your first post, its possible that they are interfering. You can try removing everything under Multimedia in System Devices and running the driver found in 4 in the Intel link.

yeah, still no luck.

What is showing in Device Manager now?

it's showing pci comm device and pci mult. auido device.

The communication device could be a modem. They usually have a sound component. I don't see any Intel drivers for that. Do you know what type of modem that is? It may be interfering.

Go to MultiMedia in Control Panel and see if its set to use any available device under the Audio tab. Check the Midi tab and play with those settings. Open sounds in Control Panel and try playing some sample sounds.

The pci multimedia audio device indicates that you have a sound card as well as onboard sound. Where are the speakers plugged in? The onboard sound needs the speakers plugged in near the majority of the connections rather than into the horizontal slots at the back of the machine.

in the multimedia i can't do nothing. everything is locked as far as audio and midi. however under midi i can change it to single instr. to multiple. Under cd music all i can change is the music volume. In the devices tab under audio devices there isn't anything under it and when right clicking on it and go to properties it says "there are no devices of this class installed in your system.
Speakers are plugged into the back of the comp.

I'm aware of that. Is there more than one area to plug them in? If you have onboard sound and a sound card there will be. Also they can be plugged into some modems, so there may be three places. Did you look?

yeah, there are 3 places to plug the speakers into: mic, speakers, and line in.

Also, would it be possible to make the crashed hard drive has a slave drive and take files from there, assuming that it crashed in a boot up part of the drive?

You can try but since they are XP drivers they may not work. You would need to know where they were.

I'm starting to think that the motherboard's firmware was written to with XP instructions and the 98 drivers won't take because of that. I don't suppose you have a CD with the motherboard drivers on it?

i'm not sure if i do or not. the one i think might have it says dell diagnostics, but i'm thinking i already tried that. Also the other day i managed to crash that hard drive for good so i'm just gonna have to wait until i get a new one...*sigh* which hopefully for the 4th of july they'll have some good sales on them so until then. Thanks for the help

When I had audio woes, I ended up having to have 1) a media control device, a PCI audio drive installed (CDROM), a half dozen audio codecs and a legacy audio driver.
I needed an MPU-401 compatible midi device, and in my case, indeo audio software.

And I might suggest making sure your cd drive is properly installed---It can work using basic cdrom drivers, yet not be audio-enabled. Your cd drive is, after all, considered your "audio drive". It takes more than drivers, you may need the drivers that enable your devices as well. I think I remember it being said that chipset and mobo drivers rarely need reinstalled, unless a major disaster happened to those components.

And one last geffaw that I have done, is to forget to take the mute off of the windows sound settings for the cd player. OOOps!

I've felt pretty stupid at times, when all it was was just a setting that I didn't know existed---especially after needlessly reinstalling megabytes of drivers I never needed.

Once I thought my modem was 'kaput' because I had unwittingly disabled the modem speaker...Okay, I AM blonde.....really!

Maybe this will help, maybe not, but in any case---I feel ya!