Sound Problem

[DooMBoy]

Well, it worked yesterday. Today, no go. I blame it on my younger brother, who got on the computer before me, more likely than not messed something up, and then skipped out the door before I could ask him why in the hell the sound wasn't working, mainly because he was gone before I got on the computer to go load up ZDoom and play some HR2 (been playing that lot lately).
So, I get on, go to my Doom2 folder, double click the ZDoom icon and get that good old message: Couldn't initiliaze sound. Well damn. Well, sometimes ZDoom does this when my computer's been on too long, and my younger brother does have the bad habit of leaving all things electrical on over-night. So I reboot, get to the desktop, and to my suprise, I see a box pop up saying that Windows is building a driver information database and whatnot. Anyway, after that I see a "New hardware has been detected and Windows is searching for drivers" box, which naturally makes me go WTF.
This of course makes me wonder what in the fuggles my brother was doing on the computer before he got off. Nothing seemed wrong, only the sound wouldn't work. Anyway I was prompted to find the correct driver for my sound card, only I couldn't, and the disk I got with my sound card with the drivers installed on it was lost long ago. So then I went to my sound card's folder, and double clicked the Setup icon there. It asked if I wanted to uninstall, then reinstall. Everything went smoothly until it started installing the driver for my sound card. Windows popped a box up then telling me that new hardware had been detected, etc etc. The driver, by this time, had installed 18%, but because Windows so kindly popped up with the new hardware box, it froze at 18% installed. I sat for five minutes waiting for it to finish installing, but it didn't. I tried this whole rigamarole over about three more times before I realized that it wasn't going to install and likely as not I wasn't going to have any sound on my computer.
Now then, my speakers are plugged up, they were turned on, and as far back as I've had my current soundcard (it's the very same one my computer came with), it's never gave me any problems. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do?

[Planky]

May or may not work, so here goes:

Try downloading the most recent drivers from the net. Remove the card from Windows (As in delete the card in Device Manager). It will then ask you if you want to reboot the computer, do so but power it off when it gets to the bios. Remove the soundcard and power up the pc, letting windows load and everything. Shut it down again and put the soundcard back in (try a different slot). When it asks for the drivers, point it to the downloaded ones.

If that doesn't work, try putting the card in another machine - if you have one available - to see if it works, if it doesn't, your soundcard is buggered :/

[Sephiroth]

a new soundcard is about $15 for a basic one. from what i know you use a gateway 450Mhz system.
chances are it is a Sound blaster 128.

anyways you can snagg updated SB-16 cards for around $5-$15. these are upgraded SB-16's and they do work great for older systems.

do as stated above.