I ran the Malware Bytes program, it came up good. I used msconfig and dropped a few programs that were not needed, but made sure the sound was left alone. I went back after and reset the programs I had stopped and that made no difference. Does the message mean anything? I does not seem to matter if I have a speaker plugged in or not, the error message comes up on MS Media Player when I select music or utube, and I get no sounds either. I do get the beep at bootup, but not the Windows welcome tune etc.