I am not making progress. I took the machine to an expert and paid for a diagnosis. He said the hard drive was going TU. He said the part that ran the sound was bad, and more problems would be expected. I bought a new drive, mirrored the data and it also does not provide sound. I don't know if that is because the HDD fault was mirrored. I am running diagnostics right now, and the sound card comes up good on that, makes the right noises in analog, but I don't know if it works on surround sound mode because I don't have a surround sound kit to plug in. Also don't have a headset so cannot check that either, but will assume that it is OK. Never mind, eh.
But still cannot make it work when it should.
My next step is to load an OS into the new drive, maybe able to use the disks that came with the machine, or else I will load one of my old Windows 98/XP OS for a trial.
I used to build my own computers but cannot compete on price any more, but if they only run for a year then crap out, what is the use?