Corrupted/lost MS audio drivers, error code 39 in device manager

From: Tini (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/25/04 

Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:16:06 -0800

The other week my PC had a spell of rebooting itself and performing a scandisk each time, and some allocation units were lost. I recall some file like wdmaud.drv was listed as a lost (truncated?) one.
Since about this time my onboard sound card has become mute; device manager showed yellow exclamations on the following:
MS Kernel Wave Audio Mixer, MS Kernel DLS Synthesizer & MS Kernel DRM Audio Descrambler.
The error message in properties tab indicates the driver is corrupt or missing ("code 39")
Following the XP Toubleshooter's advice and trying to uninstall and reinstall the driver has the PC automatically looking for a driver and saying there is nothing better than the existing one!
I've tried disabling and renabling the onboard VIA AC97 Audio onboard sound card using the BIOS settings, the machine finally recognised and reinstated the DLS Synthesizer only (though still with code 39 error).
The sound and music tests failed when I ran DXDIAG (I think I have DirectX 9).
I also find games like Age of Kings or Civ3: Conquests hang with a black screen during loading.

Has anyone any ideas about how I can (a) get hold of the right drivers to replace the missing ones; (b) get the PC to notice it needs the wave audio mixer and audio descrambler; (c) successfully install new drivers without XP telling me the existing ones are current. I thought I knew a little about IT but I'm all out of ideas now and getting very annoyed! Perhaps a cheap new PCI sound card would override all these prblems??

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. DXDIAG text added in later entry...
Tini

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