Winamp Gives Me Bad DirectSound Drivers Error

Okay, here is my problem.

Firstly, I have no sound anywhere...this isn't simply a problem with winamp as far as I can see. I have gotten the newest drivers for my motherboard and for the onboard AC97 audio card. Suffice to say, this didn't help.

There is the exclamation mark next to the device, which is appropriately called "Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)", which is obviously my audio driver and gives the error "This device cannot start (Code 10)". My speakers are not detected when plugged in.

Methods I have tried:

1) Disable the Enable the device. (No effect, although I wish this one would have helped. What a great remedy it would be.)
2) Uninstalling the device completely and then letting plug-and-play pick it up. (It worked smoothly. However, the device was merely reinstalled displaying the same error. So no effect.)
3) Downloaded completely updated drivers from seedy backalley sites. (Albeit the word seedy and backalley are in there...the drivers worked, installed properly, and I now have updated drivers...but it didn't restore my sound. So no effect)
4) Browsed around all the settings in sound and audio. They all say that no device is selected for any part of my audio setup, and when I attempt to choose the appropriate drivers, it does nothing because "This device cannot start (Code 10)"...uh...suffice to say, no effect.

I was going to go fix the .dll that people were talking about, but I actually couldn't figure out how to do so. And in the end, it doesn't seem like breaking my back over considering I'd like my sound to work on all parts of my computer, not just in winamp.

I suppose it would be somewhat proper to mention that the problem started after taking my computer completely downstairs (Unplugging all the components, etc...) in order to hook it up to the TV we have down there. I plugged an S-Video cord from the back of my video card into the TV...which displayed the video just fine...but was absent of audio and began giving me the error we're talking about. I figured it was just because the speakers weren't meant to work with your computer and plugged mine in. But to no avail, the error persisted. I figured that maybe there was some type of data conflict from the S-Video cable, and decided it wasn't a big deal. Took it back upstairs and the error persisted and my sound is nowhere to be seen...or rather heard.

Anyone think they can fix my problem?

EDIT 1: I have now actually uninstalled the drivers alltogether, and downloaded the official drivers from the site to install the card again. This has, as may be assumed, still not helped.

EDIT 2: Well I gave up and got a new sound card. I suppose I may have fried my old one when I unplugged all the components, but the computer works fine now with the new sound card.

This is how I solved the same problem:

Go to Start -> Settings -> ControlPanel -> Administrative Tools -> Services.
Here, find the service named Windows Audio, which manages Windows audio devices.
If this service is stopped then audio and its associated components will not work. Set its Startup property to Automatic so that it starts everytime when you start your system.

This fixed my problem

I also have this problem.
I've got a Fujitsu Siemens laptop, and today the sound went off. I did disable it with the little icon on the bottom of the screen as advertisements were annoying me! The sound card has now kinda disabled itself. I get this error message in the sound area in the control pannel:
"This device cannot start. (Code 10)"
I've tried most of what you guys have said already, downloading stuff, virus checking ect etc. What do I do now?
If anyone has any advice, I'd greatly take it!
Thanks,
ConfusedComputer.

I'm getting this same error, but nothing here has worked for me. I am using Windows XP 64 Professional and a Creative Audigy 4 sound card. First: No sound will play anywhere -- no start up noises, nothing -- not just in WinAMP.

* In the control panel, under Sounds and Audio Devices, it says "No Audio Device" and it does not let me select one in any of the tabs.

* I had this problem before after a Windows update and reinstalling my sound card drivers fixed it. It did *not* fix it this time. I'm also not certain that I had any Windows updates install recently, although I have them set to automatic so they may have.

* Rebooting doesn't change anything, either.

* Updating/reinstalling DirectX drivers did not fix the problem.

* When I look at the out_ds.dll in WinAMP preferences, its only option is 01: Primary Sound Driver. Under Device Info there, it says:

error getting device info
(device in use ?)

* I do not have any exclamation points under the Device Manager.

* Windows Audio is not stopped or anything under Services; when I open it, it is running, and it is set to automatically load and all that. Telling it to restart the service doesn't fix the problem either.

* I did a full system scan with Symantec and I don't have a virus or anything like that. I always keep virus scan open and I always run a firewall and I don't really visit sites that would give me viruses, so I'm certain it's not that.

I'm really frustrated by this. I thought reinstalling the sound card drivers would work like it did before, but nope, and no other popular solutions seem to work either. Any ideas?

I don't have any errors. My computer refuses to play any sound altogether. Below is the things I did in attempt to fix it...

Start > Run > dxdiag > Music > Test DirectMusic

On the above steps, the music didn't play on all of the options except one... VIA Audio (WAVE) (music actually played for that option).

How do I make VIA Audio (WAVE) my default player medium (or whatever it is)?

There was a problem on VIA MIDI Extornal Port. (Failure on step 5 (Creating the IDirectMusicPort): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Generic Failure).

I went through many troubleshooting at windows help. Nothing helped. Any help would be great. Thanks.

I went to the Drivers list and there was no problems on any drivers. All of the drivers associated with audio was in use.

Can anyone help? Do I need a new sound card?

Did you test Direct Sound bogey?
You can set your default device for stuff using "Sounds and Audio Devices" in Control Panel.

Sorry, newbe bringing back an OLD thread. But In searching for a solution to this problem, almost every search brought me to this thread, so I wanted to post my solution for anyone else that my come across this problem and this thread.
I tried all the suggestions here, several times without success. As a last resort prior to adding a sound card, I put my XPpro disk back in and went through the "upgrade" process. BINGO when it was done, sound worked! During the upgrade process I got a message about the driver being unsigned, I clicked continue anyway, and all is good now.
Hope this might help out someone else!
THANKS

ok.. i didn't take the time to read through the entire 5 pages, so here's a proper answer to the question:

go to http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-fil ... nload.html
download the dll, copy the dll file, close winamp if you have it open, locate your winamp folder (default is c:/program files/winamp/) and then locate the plugins folder in your winamp folder. paste the dll there and press "yes" when windows asks if you really want to overwrite out_ds.dll. open up winamp again, and it will work...


Hope that helps:) have fun listening to music:)

This did not work for me. THis happened on my past Win XP home install, i narrowed down to 4 offending WINDOWS OFFICIAL UPDATES.

The sad part is I did reinstall windows (upgraded hard drives) and this update happened again.

Once i figure which of these four it is, i'll repost:

KB935839
KB935840
KB900485
KB929123

I hope this helps.

-> this helped me fix the problem
thanks

how do i do it it doesnt work for me either please somebody tell me

You have to install that dll into your computer. Kind of hard to explain here.

Yes, I am experiacing the same problem as well as everyone. It gives me the

Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration.

Error code: 88780078

Can someone help me? I'm not really sure what I did wrong, but I have a good idea what I did I accidently deleted some stuff from my add or remove programs but I forgot what stuff I deleted.. I think one of them was "Soundmax" or something.. Also, this isn't a winamp problem either, after that add and remove programs thing, NONE of my sounds work. And I been trying to work with it but can't seem to find a solution. On my winamp thing I have the following listed:
Nullsoft DiskWriter v2.13 [out_disk.dll]
Nullsoft DirectSound Output v2.47 (d) [out_ds.dll]
Nullsoft Waveout Output v2.11 (d) [out_wave.dll]


Anyone please help, I need my sound lol.

Listen to this guy... I did it and it worked out fine for me.... thanks a sh1t load man.. a fkn GENIUS! ;D

i had the same situation as everyone else and when i read what people did on here this happen and i got it working again:

1)CTRL+P on winamp and CLICK on OUTPUT
2) Make sure DIRECTSOUND OUTPUT is highlight and then CLICK on CONFIGURE
3) on mine... i switched it to REALTEK AC97 AUDIO

for some strange reason i think it was set on Primary Sound Drive and i don't know if that has any effect at all to it... it works fine for me after doing that.... ^_^"