This happened only once about 6 months ago and I uninstalled/installed the realtek audio driver, and there was peace. However, in the last two weeks this problem revisited and got much much worse. At first a system restore took care of the problem ( I even tried to stop the windows updates - although it seems to be updating anyway??). I have uninstalled and reinstalled the driver at least 8 times in the last few days. Now everytime I turn on the computer it comes back on with the red x through the speaker. Restore is now useless as I can't go back far enough. There is no trace of any device in "sound" nor is there anything like a sound or game controller in the device manager. However, the driver does show up in the control panel??? So, I uninstall, reboot, install the driver and reboot. The speakers work. Next time I turn on the computer the x is back and no sound. I have a satellite vista 32.please help thnx1 person got this answerI do too

After spending many many hours on forums and support sites and trying all kinds of things (most of which were incredibly complicated techie remedies) I found nothing which helped me but thousands of other windows people with the same problem or a variation thereof. Until, by some miracle, I found a simple suggestion on yahoo answers: "...go into the control panel/Users and turn off user account control. After I did that the driver installation was successful..." and voila after more than a week of silence I have sound!! Worth trying