i recently (yesterday) lost my sound from a realtek alc888 device driver. it all started very simple, in my status bar, pop ups continued to, uhhh.... well, pop up, stating that i just unplugged a device from the driver, then it would tell me i plugged it back in, all the time doing nothing remotely close to these insane accusations, i continued without really worrying about it. until i actually lost my sound, and it went crazy with those pop ups. so i uninstalled the driver, reboot, installed new driver from realtek, and it worked for like 4 hours, then no sound again. uninstalled driver, reboot, install, reboot, no sound, and i am apparently continuously unplugging the jack like a madman. so, another uninstall, reboot, but this time i install the driver from the cd i got with my pc (dell inspiron 530s-120b), now this actually got me somewhere, well sort of, now it tells me that everything is wonderful when it comes to my sound, drivers are installed, speakers are "working", but there is still no actual sounds blasting me in the face as what would be happening with these things cranked to the max. oh yeah, i even tried plugging them into the front jack, but strangely the system simply does not recognize this, and continues to let me know that i have unplugged them, but i do hear that split second of speaker static when i plug them in, so at least the speakers know whats going on. i also tried restoring, but it seems you cant do that if you never actually made a restore point, im new to vista, so had i known i would have no restore options, i would of made one, but i guess that wouldnt be this much fun. anyone with any help for me would be greatly appreciated, i have spent about 7 hours googleing and downloading, and trying all sorts of new and exciting ways of accomplishing absolutely nothing. thank you kindly for your time, and please help soon.