All drivers installed, no audio

[Twinbird]

I have a Dell inspiron 1521 (laptop) running Windows XP Professional SP3. I have all the drivers installed on it, but I can't get the audio to work. The Sounds and Audio Devices Properties states that there is "No Audio Device" and the DirectX Diagnostic Tool fails at step 3 when running the DirectSound Test, specifically, it states: "DirectSound test results: Failure at step 3 (DirectSoundCreate): HRESULT = 0x88789978 (No Driver)". When I try to open a file in Windows Media Player, a pop-up appears, stating, "WIndows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another program, or it may not be functioning properly."
Any help? Thanks!

[osprey4]

Hi Twinbird,

All drivers installed, huh? Did you install the chipset drivers FIRST? Do you see any question marks in device manager?

Obviously, repeatedly running audio programs is not going to help a hardware driver issue.

[Twinbird]

All the drivers are installed, there are no question marks in device manager. I will try to totally uninstall the sound driver, and then try install this one. The chipset drivers should have been installed first, but it's not my laptop so I can't be 100% sure about it.

* Edit: I've been troubleshooting/ trying to solve this for awhile now. It's most likely a hardware issue, thanks for the help though!

[osprey4]

While in device manager, did you check audio devices?

[Twinbird]

Yes, everything should be working, I can try reinstalling windows and all the drivers, but it's most likely a hardware issue, I edited my post above. Thanks for the help.