Okay, here's a puzzler for you....

One of my work computers (XP Pro, SP3) has started misbehaving.  It stands like this:

The sound works fine on the computer (tested with youtube)

The default sounds are all playable from the sound selector

BUT

None of them play

I get no sound when I log on or off, nothing when emptying the recycle bin, nothing when I get new e-mail (which is the most irritating one) and nothing when I click the volume slider to get the ding.

I do however get the start navigation 'click' in explorer and windows explorer. Which leads me to believe that it's just a problem with the "Windows" sounds, as everything under there doesn't work, but ones like "Windows Explorer" do

After extensive searching it seems to be some kind of registry issue (as another profile on the same computer is fine) and I've tried all sorts:

• Numerous .reg fixes to restore the default sounds
  
• Fix #6 from here
  
• Exporting the "AppEvents" when logged on as a working user and merging it into the not working user

quote:

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Originally posted by
Annoyances.org

The previous solutions (NB: regarding fix for some missing keys) didn't work for me since I do have the correct keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents. I found that the data at the root of HKEY_CURRENT_USER had been nulled, instead of "value not
set" there was nothing. The solution is to delete the string - windows will rebuild the correct one instantly and your sounds should be restored. It worked for my system.
Before: HKEY_CURRENT_USER (Default) REG_SZ
After: HKEY_CURRENT_USER (Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

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