Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I have a real problem with my Fortissimo II card which I think dates back to
when I stupidly allowed XP to install a Windows Update driver download for
"Unsupported Crystal Sound Device". Ever since then things have been
somewhat screwy despite uninstalling the Windows Update and reinstalling the
Hercules drivers.

The situation is this.

- With the latest drivers from Hercules (for XP, but not signed) all
installs fine but I get no sound at all. No errors in device manager, but
zip sound.

- By going back to driver 2.03 (still available from Hercules, but really
only for W98) I can get my optical port working, but still no analogue
sound).

These two things are consistent, but having installed and uninstalled the
drivers, and used the Hercules registry cleaning utility more times than I
can mention something else strange happens. Every now and again and it
really does seem random (I am sure I am using the same steps each time).
Occasionally after installing either of the above all sound will work fine
immediately after install (analogue and digital sound) but when I reboot
the situation will revert to as above. I even tried setting a restore point
when all sound was working and then reverting to it after a reboot had
killed my analogue output. No dice. The restore worked fine but sound was
still missing from the analogue port.

I have of course quadrouple checked that sound is not muted, master volume
is up and speaker volume is at max.

Any clues why a reboot should change things? Is XP trying to be clever and
reinstating a dll or soemthing that I don't want? Any idea how to completely
clean the registry and system folders of all sound info (as with a clean XP
install) and then install the Hercules drivers? I am totally baffled.

Thanks!

Jo