Audio problem

Jacee said:

Do you have external speakers to see if they will work?

tried as well, and not working,

the problem is my computer is not detecting the hardware at all, this could be a hardware problem, or I just need a way to successfully install Microsoft UAA, which will detect the sound device so I can install the drivers etc.

Yes I have.

mm, I've actually got rid of windows 7, and installed a copy of windows xp sp3 on my laptop, I had some trouble getting sound to work on xp for abit but I finally fixed it with the "have disk" forced installation of the audio drivers. Then I created another partition, so I could setup windows 7 on it for a dualboot machine. Surprisingly the audio was working perfect upon entering the clean install, the drivers were all installed and working.
BUT after a day the sound stopped working and I checked the device manager, both microsoft UAA and Conexant hd audio drivers were missing, they are no where to be found even after I've done "show hidden devices". After this happened I rebooted to check the sound on the xp partition, the sound wasn't working on there as well, but on xp when I opened device manager under "show hidden devices" the microsoft uaa and conexant hd audio drivers were listed, but the Microsoft UAA driver says the hardware device is not connected...

Soo i'm guessing i have a problem with a PCI connection on my audio? or something? I'm not really sure how all this PCI bus etc connections work.

I believe it is an onboard sound chip,

would I need to replace it? any estimated costs?