New
#1
Sound Devices Have Disappeared
Have a Gateway M-Series laptop that came with 32 bit Vista Home Premium installed. We upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium (also 32 bit) several years ago and have had no problems until recently.
We have no sound. The speaker icon in the system tray has a red X to the right of it. Clicking on it opens a diagnostic page, that within 20 seconds says it couldn't identify the problem. When I go to Control Panel - Sound the Playback tab only displays an AMD High Definition Audio Device which it says is not plugged in. We DID have 2 other devices listed there previously, one of then being the default device labeled Speakers and Headphones. Device manager currently displays only the AMD HDMI sound device.
When I start the laptop I always get a msg that Catalyst Control Center host application has stopped working and that Windows is searching for a solution. It doesn't find one.
Yesterday I was somehow able to get everything back into place (Tweaking All in one repair?), but although it showed the speaker icon without the X, and another device displayed under Sound in Device Mgr, and the Speakers and Headphones was back under the Playback tab, and Windows Audio was enabled and started.... I still had no sound. A subsequent reboot brought back the red X in the system tray.
I have a W7 32 bit disk and when I attempt an in place upgrade it wants me to first deauthorize iTunes on the computer and remove ATI Catalyst Control Center and ATI Catalyst Install Manager. I have gone into Control Panel and (apparently) done a successful repair of AMD Catalyst Install Manager (I have no idea about the difference between ATI and AMD). After the 'repair' I rebooted and again got the msg that Catalyst Control Center host application has stopped working. I have no listing in the Programs and Features for anything referring to a Catalyst Control Center.