re: sound device error
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 at 5:44 am
Posted by King (3 messages posted)

Hi to all!

This message goes out to all of you who hadn't the luck to get their sound back to
life with the given solutions in this thread:
I followed all steps, but still my "PnP software enumerator" (or in german "PnP Softwaregeräte
Enumerator") told me that he couldn't load the needed drivers. Consequently I had
still no sound. I also made a windows repair install, but the problem was still there.
After hundreds of trial & errors I finally came to a solution for WIN XP!:

1.) Deinstall your sound drivers. Save streamci.dll and swenum.sys and machine.inf
to a temp folder as mentioned above.

2.) Deinstall your failing "PnP software enumerator".

3.) Go into the registry via regedit or the editor of your choice. In there close
all keys so you just see "my work", "workplace" or whatever the englisch name for
the german "Arbeitsplatz" is (it has a little computer symbol next to its name, I
guess you know what I mean.)

4.) Then search for "swenum". Delete every key that you find. Before you do so I
highly recommend to create a system restore point or a backup of your registry, just
in case something goes wrong. You have to delete the whole key, not just the line
with "swenum" in it. For example: You'll find the word "swenum" in a key where you
can also find "pnp software enumerator" and some other entries. Again :You have to
delete the whole key. On the left side you see an open folder in which you are in
right now, deleteing this folder means to delete the whole key. Do so, it the quickest
and easiest way. If there comes a warning that you don't have the permission to do
so, right click the folder and give yourself the permissions to delete the folder
;-)
Do this for all keys where you find the "swenum" in it. You should find about 5-10
keys.

5.) After you finished close the editor and reopen it again. Research the registry
to make sure their is no more swenum entry.

6.) Restart, then check your registry again. Just for the case Win XP has reinstalled
something. If you find another "swenum" entry delete it. Do also search for "PnP
software enumerator". If you have done right before you shouldn't find anything.
If you do anyway, delete the whole key again.

7.) Go to "windows/system32/drivers" and delete swenum.sys.
Also go to "windows/system32" and delete the file streamci.dll (don't do that if
you have forgotton to follow step1 of my description!)

8.) Now reinstall your "PnP software enumerator" following the steps mentioned in
the posts above. (In the hardware manager click "have disk" and choose your temp
folder and the inf file in there, choose "PnP software enumerator" under standard
devices or something like that).

9.) If you have done right you should have the "PnP software enumerator" back without
showing any errors. If you have done right Win XP shouldn't ask you to restart. Now
install your sound drivers, restart and be happy again.

I hope this solution did the trick for those who didn't find the posts above solving
their problems. Maybe some steps can be left out, but I recommend to follow all of
them, because I'm not sure where the errors is hiding exactly.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]