August 2, 201115 yr I'm trying to fix a friend's Inspiron 6000 laptop, which is having some driver issues. The sound card isn't working but doesn't show up in the device manager (not even as an "unknown device") and neither does the modem. It sounds like the problem started when he installed a bunch of drivers from Dell. The first thing I did was uninstall the audio drivers, but re-installing fails because it doesn't detect the sound device. Nothing in the device manager, although DriverDetective sees the modem (it expired though, and won't cooperate). Scanned the registry with CCleaner and ran system file checker. Any ideas before I resort to attempting a repair install?
August 2, 201115 yr Look at Safe Mode device manager, and remove all the sound and modems you see there, then reboot into normal mode... see if it detects something.
August 3, 201115 yr Author Look at Safe Mode device manager, and remove all the sound and modems you see there, then reboot into normal mode... see if it detects something.Unfortunately nothing shows up in safe mode -- no audio or modem devices, no unknown devices either. Makes it all the more difficult to fix. Might just try a repair install, though I'm not very confident that will work either...
August 4, 201115 yr Double check you have the right drivers for the right model (enter Serial on Dell's site) and OS. Those Dell drivers don't have very explicit names.
August 4, 201115 yr I would check with some live-Linux CD/DVD to see if the sound works first.If it does work i would reinstall the OS.
August 4, 201115 yr Have you looked at the BIOS settings, anything disabled that shouldn't be, onboard sound etc?
August 5, 201115 yr Author Nothing in the BIOS, nothing new with hidden devices shown. PartedMagic doesn't see any audio devices, I guess it's a hardware problem. Edited August 5, 201115 yr by kahlil88
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