Audio Device Fail! Halp!

[Doomsday]

I have no idea at all what prompted this...

"There are no active mixer devices available. To install mixer devices, Go to Control Panel and Other Hardware, and then click ADD HARDWARE."

When I hopped off the computer last night, everything was working fine. Nobody else touched the computer during the night. When I get on again in the morning...

My sound wasn't working (except I could hear the error sound whenever this popup came, hmm?), so I google a fix.

I found this fix online, didn't work:

Hi. I had the same problem and found the answer elsewhere. What you have to do is start the Windows Audio Service. For some reason it gets stopped. Here's what the post said:

Go to Start --> Run, and type in services.msc.

A window will pop up with a list of services. Scroll down to Windows Audio. Right-click
and click on Properties.

Make sure that "Startup type" is set to automatic. Also, make sure, under "Service
status," start is selected.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

So that didn't work. In the same forum I find this suggestion.

After trying every suggested fix out there and hitting a brick wall, I came across the answer.



The plug and play software emulator was missing. It was impact not only my sound  but several other devices as well. Fixed it by searching for machine.inf then copy to temp directory. remove
at about line 20 beneath [Control Flags]the words " ExcludeFromSelect=* "

go to control panel, add new hardware, next (let it seach), yes hardware
is connected, next, scroll to bottom, add new hardware device, next,
install from list, next, select system devices, next, select have disk,
point to amended copy of machine.inf in temp directory, scroll to "plug
and play software device enumerator" in right hand column, next and
complete install. Thats it. In seconds you should be fixed!

Okay, not only does this NOT work, the little speaker icon in the bottom right completely disappeared.

So then I start looking for new drivers... I go to compaq's website, look up my computer, get the audio driver...

Install it... But installation doesn't work. "Realtek HD Audio driver Setup Failure!" And boom... Can't install the driver.

I literally have no idea what to do now.