no audio device installed

im having the worst luck lately with just one thing after another....all thanx to the ati tv tuner card (and no help from ati either)

now my audio driver is gone, and although i reinstalledthe drivers again (realtek97) explorer sais the device is working properly...
but when i try to play something through windows media player it sais that the device is not installed or used by another program.
in control panel - audio devices.... sais nothing is installed?!?!

wtf?

just in case people might suggest, i already did the following:

-reinstalled all drivers to newest (device manager thinks theyre ok)
-rolled back audio driver just to make sure
-made sure windows audio is set to auto in services
-reinstalled XP! (problem still there can u believe it?)