Last night I installed the PSS 777 Professional and all went well. I also installed the two service packs for the plane 1 and 2 and that went well. Rebooted, all worked fine with sounds. Closed down, went to bed.This evening, all Windows sounds seem to have disappeared on my DELL XPS Gen 4 PC. No startup sounds, no shutdown sounds, no WMV video sounds. I can play a Rolling Stones DVD using "Power DVD" on the PC and get sound but the WMV stuff and all DELL sounds don't work and no sounds at all in Fs2004. I did a DirectX test and it said something failed at Step 19 after I clicked to say I'd heard no test sounds. I tried to reinstall my original SB Audigy Z sound drivers from an unopened factory CD-ROM, but it was a terribly confusing process and didn't seem to work. It asked me where I wanted the drivers installed and I had no idea where to point in the Windows directories. I tried to do a Restore, a Repair, etc. I had no idea what was going on.Can anybody help me figure this out? It's bizarre and incredibly frustrating and annoying. I've never had such a thing happen in 10 years of simming.Thanks!JS

If using Windows XP go to Start, Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices, Audio Tab and hopefully you can select a sound device.

Well, thanks. I don't know what happened or why exactly but now the sounds are back. I did do as you suggest and there was already a device selected--my device!I just tested the CyberPower DVD app and that worked; that was the only sound system that worked last night. Then I tested the DELL Jukebox sound system and that worked after failing last night as well. So then I re-tested FS2004, which uses DELL Jukebox to power its sounds, and now it bloody works too! All Windows XP sounds are back too!Maybe I managed to reinstall the Audigy drivers last night even though nothing seemed to work after doing that and doing a re-boot.One other thing I did was go into the Sound and Audio Devices and under Sounds I went into Sound Scheme which was blank so I inserted Windows Default sounds and saved the previous file. Perhaps that did something good....? I just don't know (!)Anyway thanks for the post.JS