Friends,

Request your help please with these sudden problems please:
• Speaker Icon disappeared from task bar
• Volume control buttons on front do not operate (what drivers control the front multimedia buttons?)
• Cannot play windows sounds
• Windows Firewall turns off automatically
• System restore does not function properly
The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6000 (purchased in 2005) with OS windows XP Media center. The Audio Drivers are from Sigmatel. Until recently things were really smooth when I installed Studio 9 and TMGEnc DVD Author when my system started to crash at the time of shut down. Uninstalled the two softwares and the system shut down properly. But the above problems started. The front volume buttons stopped working. The “Volume Meter” shows up but the volume is not controlled. I also noticed the speaker icon missing.
The windows Firewall turns off automatically and I have to set it ‘on’ each time I boot (Could this be related to the sound problem?) Also, when I go to the Sounds and Audio devices through control panel, and under the Sounds tab, I am not able to play the sample windows sound files. (The play button remains grayed when I select the sound files)
On scanning for spy ware, a lot of things showed up which were effectively removed. (Used Spybot, Ad-aware, Pc-clin, AVG antivirus and counter spy in safe mode to cure the system and then re-checked in normal mode to ensure the removal).
I went through several forums and very painstakingly followed the steps to set this right, without success.
The things I tried: Disabled and Enabled the function keys with Dell Quickset option but failed to get back the multimedia button functionality. Ensured that the 'Place Volume Icon in taskbar' is checked. (As a work around, I have added sndvol32.exe to the quick launch and operate through this for now.)
I had uninstalled Pinnacle studio and the Quicktracks that was associated with it when I first noticed the problem so re-installed. I had also uninstalled ffdshow and DIV X which I re-installed hoping to get back the speaker icon.
Copied the Sndvol32.exe from i386 folder, tried to remove the past icons from registry, UPnP icon hiding, making SSDP automatic etc and nothing works. Tried system restore to a point before the noticing of spy ware, but it says “no changes made” after re-booting. Only changes made at a later date are being reversed.
Doing this for a “non-techy” guy like me was so difficult and had to spend a lot sleepless nights. I am sure you understand my frustration.
I would be very grateful for your help please.

Thank you in advance

I suggest you follow the instructions in this thread and post a HijackThis log in that section (not this one please).

http://www.d-a-l.com/help/showthread.php?t=32403

If they give you an all clear please return to this thread and we can pick it up from there.