i recently had to completely reinstall windows xp and believe i am missing some drivers or something. everything seems to be working ok apart from the sound. my speakers work when plugged into an ipod so they arnt the problem. i have installed all the drivers from the dell website but still no sound. audio devices are enabled in my bios but my system isnt detecting any audio devices. any help would be much appreciated thankyou.

Download, install, and run Everest Home Edition (CLEAN FreeWare) on this machine. Once it's finished loading and running, look under;

MOTHERBOARD
Post what is listed for your Motherboard (make/model) and the Motherboard Chipset description.

Multimedia, or, under Multimedia, PCI / PnP Audio. This will tell you what sound devices you have available on your system.

Post that information exactly as presented by the program.

hi this is the rsult of the motherboard scan

and the multimedia

You should find drivers here;
Intel 82801FB ICH6 drivers - Google Search

I'm surprised you couldn't get them directly from Dell.

If you post your machines serial number (this is safe) we can narrow things down.

yeah i downloaded all the drivers and installed them all... my service tag is 8bvsh2j,. the link that you gave me is that teh name of the driver i need?

You said you installed all the driv4ers from Dell, but did you also include the Chipset driver? I see these there:

if that was on the drivers and downloads page then i downloaded it. is it worth completely reinstalling windows again or would i get the same problems? ive had this problem for over a week now and i feel like i know a lot more now than i did then but i am still lost as to what to do. i just want to be able to listen to audio and dell have made it near impossible for computer newbs to understand what needs to be done.

When you post/enter your machines Serial Number, you can access all the stock drivers for that machine as seen here;

Drivers & Downloads

(Note the Service Tag listed near the top center of the text area.)