i see this for each of my two audio drivers (the onboard sound card and my high end firewire soundcard) if i go into Device Manager/right click the device/Properties/Properties tab/Audio Devices/expand to choose the audio card/Properties...

it says Status: Driver has been enabled but has not been started.

this basically has the effect that neither driver shows up under any Windows audio setting, so i can't assign either sound card to work for something like Windows Media Player or Real Player, etc...

I have two XP OS's, one for music production, another for web development...my music OS only has this problem...very strange

Anyone have any solution?

Try disabling the soundcard on the MB.

If that doesn't help, try reinstalling the drivers.

If that doesn't help, try reinstalling the driver swenum.sys. First you must create a .inf file for it:

copy machine.inf from %windir%\inf to a temp dir
remove line 20: ExcludeFromSelect=*
add new hardware have disk (select the temp dir with the modified machine.inf) and install the plug and play software enumerator.

Hope one of these helps.

wizkid, thanks, i believe i've tried all of these though...
the reinstalling swenum.sys i found on another forum, but they said the fix only worked if Software enumerator was not installed in Device Manager/System. mine is...i tried it anyway, and didn't work.

anyway, i'll try all these again just to be sure

well, no luck here...

some setting must be causing this...again, two OS's, one does this, the other doesn't. i did some music related system tweaks to this OS, thinking it must be related, but so far, can't figure it out.

it seems it simply doesn't load these devices up once XP is started. any way i can verify this/change this?

well, nevermind...i found inside Windows Media Player tools/speakers menu the choice for both my soundcards... :grinthumb

which is stange b/c i still don't show any audio devices under control panel/audio/

well, scratch my last post about "nevermind"...sure, i can somehow access my soundcard through WMP, but I still don't get any sound at websites thru Flash player, and the worst is my pro audio cards MIDI port is not being recognized by my music software!

so no one? The driver has been enabled but has not been started. is the message. Can anyone help me investigate this? how can i tell what drivers Windows decides to load initially and how i can alter this?

this is crazy...i just did a repair of my Windows OS to fix this problem...it's still there!

anyone??!! help!!

Here is another one with the same problem. I have no idea when it started but suddenly I could not use my sound card anymore. I've tried to disable the on-board adapter and installed another one in PCi slot but had the same problem. So not a HW problem. If you find the solution I'd love to hear it.

I've looked elswhere, read some more things and solved it! It was the "Enumerator" issue. To make sure you've been following the right procedure checkthis:
1. Chek if PnP SW Enumerator is installed on your machine (Device Manager / System devices) - should be listed there!
2. If it is not there then we will probably solve it!
3. Locate "machine.inf" on your OS, copy it somewhere and modify it (find "ExcludeFromSelect=*" and remove the line or simply exclude it from processing by adding a ";" at the beginning)
4. Check the "machine.inf" file for location where SWENUM should be located (mine was reading: SWENUM.CoInstallers.CopyFiles = 11 ; %windir%\System32)
5. Find "swenum.sys" file on your XP installation CD (mine was in DRIVER.CAB) and copy it to the proper location (I am not sure if it is necessary but worked for me)
6. Go to Control Panel /Ad HW and follow the wizard towards manual selection of device to be added
7. Select Add System device
8. Select Have disk
9. Navigate to changed machine.inf
10. from the list select standard deviecs (in the left list) and "Plug and Play Software Enumerator" in the right list
11. Finish the installation
If it stil does not work reinstall the audio adapters' drivers. It should work now. If it does not, I can't help.
I am writing these instruction so much in details as I only found very basic instruction on the web and only after trying around different ways got the result! Hoe it works for you to!

Thank yo Jurekos

After numerous hours and hours of erasures/reload/reboots i found this possible solution I did not understand it and still don't BUT IT WORKED

hey, I guess I am one of the countless who face this audio problem... I 've been reading about how one possible solution requires saving machine.inf (minus line 20), streamci.dll and swenum.sys to an alternate location and something to the effect of removing the "corrupted plug and play enumerator" and somehow reinstalling it after also removing swenum from the registry (<---another thing I am confused about).

My problem is that I can't even attempt to do this because my computer won't let me copy or move swenum from its location on my C drive (a problem defined as "cyclic renduncancy check")... I am also unsure which one I need, the one in system32\drivers or another in I386\DRIVER.CAB?

1. The main thing is this... I have heard people talking about sending the swenum.sys to each other and was wondering if even could do this for me. If anyone can help, my e-mail is... metalmasterdisfigure@yahoo.com... Thank you......

To Jerokes

I can not thank you enough for your help in fixing my sound problem. It was the "Enumerator" issue.
I followed your instructions step by step except for "swenum.sys" file . I did nothing with that. Just the machine.inf.

I have been searching since 6/1 and now it is 6/10. I have been reinstalling and disableing and uninstalling. I have been going crazy.
I HAVE SOUND. Thank you so very very much. I was going to have to unhook the computer, which I hate to do, and take it to the shop to have the sound fixed. I do not trust them not to format my drives or something. You are a life saver.
Jackie

Oh Hell Yeah!!

Thanks Jerokes. I haven't had such a hard time installing hardware since the mid 90s when I first started using computers. LOL I Knew it had to be windows after I tried everything but this and I mean everything.

I didn't notice "The driver has been enabled but not started" message in device manager untill the 3rd soundcard I installed. I noticed when I tried to turn up my volume it would say no device is loaded and my sound card was grayed out in Soundcards and other Devices in control pannel. When I searched for those I got help in starting services for windows audio because those are symptons for that problem also. But its ALOT worse than that.

I think if you have swemum in your system32 already then you don't have to move one there. So if you are having a problem copying over one thats already there I would just forget that step. If its corrupted or something you could try a boot disk and delete it out of windows or try to copy over it in safe mode. Not sure though.

Anyway thanks again this problem is a mother. I've been working on it on and off for 3 days now and now its done.

Jurekos - You Rock! Similar to the other users who suddenly lost audio, I spent the better part of an evening cannibalizing my PC with no luck of restoring audio. I kept finding the 'Driver is enabled but has not been started' note in the driver tab and decided to throw out a life line, after all attempts at the board level failed. Wanted to report my problem and send out a thanks!

Hi.

After looking everywhere, I have found this fairly old message, which I hoped would get me back my sound. I followed all steps but in the end I got the following message:

"The following hardware was installed: System. An error occurred during the installation of the device. The data is invalid".

I would appreciate anyone's help on this one as this is driving me crazy.

Thx

KRJ,
I just ran into the same problem; I had been using one high-end sound card (M-Audio Delta 1010) and then installed another (PreSonus FireStudio, which is firewire), then uninstalled it..
Anyway, I haven;t tried the above solution, but I saw another potential fix that you might be interested in:
help.lockergnome.com/windows/sound-enabled-started-ftopict183546.html
I am planning on trying each and will hopefully report one that works.

I was not able to post a link, being new here (how stupid).
It starts w/ http

MY problem was solved this way:
First I suggest everyone to create a System Restore point to have something to return
in case of something goes wrong. You can boot XP to safe mode by pressing F8 at the
beginning of the Windows startup and select Safe Mode if the system doesn’t start
in normal mode and use System Restore there to go back to the working configuration.

Then try these steps only if the others mentioned here don’t help. I had everything
ok in Device Manager and every driver was running that should, compared to an other
working system, but the symptom was that there was no sound coming out from the sound
card. Everything was OK in the Device Manager, but in the Sounds and Audio Devices
Control Panel there was only the Voice recording option on the Voice tab, and the
MIDI music playback (without the sound card being in the list) on the Audio tab active.
The others like Voice playback, Sound playback, Sound recording and everything on
the Volume tab was grayed out.

1. Create the restore point.

2. On the System Properties panel, Advanced tab, Environment Variables button, under
the User variables click New and create a variable named devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices
with the value of 1.

3. Open the Device Manager and select Show hidden devices from the View menu.

4. Under the Sound, video and game controllers group, find your sound card(s) and
disable it/them (don’t need to uninstall).

5. Then uninstall the following devices:
- Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter
- Microsoft Kernel System Audio Device
- Microsoft Kernel Wave Audio Mixer
- Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver

6. Select Scan for hardware changes from the Action menu. Now the system should redetect
and reinstall the deleted devices automatically. You may get non signed driver warnings,
click continue.

7. Enable the devices you disabled in step 4. You may need to restart the computer.
The problem should be disappeared, you should be able to play sounds.
I got this (verbatim) from: .annoyances.org
Again, I can't post links until I do 5 posts here, so I can't point to the original source for this solution, which should have the credit.

I had this issue and your resolution worked for me. I have a lenovo thinkpad t60p and all of a sudden the sound was gone and now it's back!
Thanks,
Charlie