AC'97 Sound problem

Is the use only default devices radio box checked? If so, uncheck it and see if you can see the devices.

Have you reloaded the drivers for the sound card?

I've loaded drivers many times,"use only default devices" radio box is also greyed out. I've just installed another hard drive with WinXP Pro, sounds working, so it must be a software problem.
Can't leave like this becase of the amount of data and progs on original drive

open the system.ini file in Notepad or Wordpad.

Under the BOOT section, you should have a line that says:

drivers=mmsystem.dll

There may be other things in the line after drivers= , but one of the things has
to be mmsystem.dll. If it isn't there, add it. If there is no line that says drivers=
at all, add the whole string, then re-boot.

Good luck. I know how frustrating it can be to have a problem that you KNOW you should
be able to solve and just can't.

This sounds like a conflict issue to me. First, when in device manager be sure to select 'view -> Show hidden devices' from the toolbar. Examine the sound, video and game controllers tab again. See how many are actually greyed out now. Remove any that say under properties 'This device is not currently connected' if it will allow you to. If it will not allow removal, it is used at boot instance. If removal of the hidden devices does not fix the problem, remove ALL the devices related to the AC97 sound drivers reboot and let them be rediscovered. If this doesn't work, go into 'My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables'. Add the following variable under the 'System Variables' section:
devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices with a value of '1'. Reboot. Go back to Device manager and examine the sound etc... items again and see what shows up. Remove anything greyed out that will let you and reboot. This should fix your problem.

Just a note on the subject:

I have WinXP 62bit and an M-Audio sound card
I have presisely the same problem
"Driver is enabled bit has not been started"
shows up on the description of the sound card on the "properties" tab.

I have tried these things (posted as of 4/26)
Remember, Device Manager "thinks" the card is working but there is "no audio device" in the control panel view

I read on the net, an issue with the number of instances of drivers listed in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

Apparently Windows freakes after the 10th recurring instance of "midiX=wdmaud.drv" or "waveX=wdmaud.drv" here .. and a new instannce is created every time you install/reinstall the soundcard drivers and NOT removed with uninstall

Knocking the recurring instances down to 2 does not fix the problem on my machine

A tough one !

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