audio drivers

[unclecrash]

Hi all,
I am working on a compaq presario 5000 with 256 ram 30gb Hdd running windows millenium edition with all updates installed.

The motherboard sound card is listed in device manager as "soundmax integrated digital audio"

The problem is that there is no sound and "control panel>sound and multimedia>properties>audio/video" reports no playback/recording devices.

I have downloaded drivers from microsoft and various sites for sound max but none work. I have tried removing the card under device manager and reinstalling but no luck.

I managed to get it working once when it seemed ordinary windows drivers were installed but on restart the drivers were overwritten and again no sound. I can't repeat the successful installation again as every search using update drivers, microsoft update, other site searches etc all return drivers that do not work.

I have also removed and reinstalled audio codecs using add/remove programs>windows setup

What am i missing here?

Many thanks in advance