There are no active mixer devices available.

[fooksalt]

A few days ago something strange happened, I left my computer on and left for awhile (afk). When I came back, I could not hear sounds from anything except for system sounds such as the "log in/out" sound, "error message" sound, etc. When I double clicked on the sound icon on the task bar a message popped up saying this:

"There are no active mixer devices available. To install mixer
devices, go to Control Panel, click Printers and Other Hardware, and then
click Add Hardware.

This program will now close."

After seeing this I decided to reboot my computer. Upon start up, it was functioning again but the next day, sound just randomly stopped working again. So I rebooted my computer again and once again, it worked. This time it worked for a few times until within the past hour, it stopped working again.

Something I should add is this: I got a virus about 3 weeks ago that makes my computer very difficult to start (about 30 tries and my computer will finally start). With this virus, when I try to start my computer, I will either get the blue screen of death at the blue loading bar or the blue loading bar will go extremely slow and when that happens I can hear my computer's CPU spike as
the virus launches a disguised svchost.exe to connected to a site and begin downloading other malicious and harmful files. This is the reason why I do not turn my computer off any more. I leave it on standby when I am not using it. I am running Windows XP Home. Normally when it is on, the disguised svchost.exe will launch every 10 minutes, but I have avast! Antivirus
that will prevent it from opening every time it tries to. avast! will also scan any files that are put in use and tell me if they are infected and give me the option to delete or ignore. I usually delete everything.

That's about it, someone please help me! I don't want to keep restarting my computer because it takes 20-30 minutes to get it started! It doesn't even start in any safe modes! The virus no longer has any files on my hard drive that I am aware of but the virus has permanently changed some registry keys to still do it's dirty work!!!

[Nymphs]

There is easy fix that you can try. Click on start and then type services.msc. In the open window search for Windows Audio. At the left side on top you can see Start. Click on it and then right click on Windows Audio and go to Properties. Choose Automatic mode for Startup type. Reboot once if needed and then check back. Go in the volume button on system tray to check that the volume button is working or not.

[Nick2ooo]

There is easy fix that you can try. Click on start and then type services.msc. In the open window search for Windows Audio. At the left side on top you can see Start. Click on it and then right click on Windows Audio and go to Properties. Choose Automatic mode for Startup type. Reboot once if needed and then check back. Go in the volume button on system tray to check that the volume button is working or not.

Thank you for this. Really