Hi silentthunder127, welcome to itsallPC \

I have encountered this issue multiple times before with AC'97 based onboard sound; Windows will not map through the sound devices for some reason. The signature of this problem is the greyed out devices on the playback options in the control panel; aside form which, there are no reported issues at all. I was not able to figure out why this occurred, or how to fix it directly, but the old "driver re-stack" trick seems to work.

• First, uninstall all drivers from Add/Remove Programs. I mean ALL drivers; graphics, chipset, ethernet...everything; this is an important stage. Reboot once done.
  After getting back to the desktop, cancel any device detection dialogs.
• Open the Device Manager
• Expand System Devices
• Right click on Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System and select Uninstall. This will take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes.
  Confirm system reboot when prompted.
  On returning to Windows, cancel all device detection dialogs.
• Install drivers in this order (with reboots in between): Chipset, Graphics, Sound, LAN, anything else.

The Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System driver is actually the root of the entire device driver tree; removing this will force Windows to re-detect and reinstall all devices. Uninstalling and Reinstalling drivers will ensure the factory configurations are restored. Three out of Five times this fixes the problem completely, other times the issue is temporarily fixed but reoccurs after a reboot, or is completely unaffected.

The chip that is responsible for the sound is actually the paired ICH5/ICH5R southbridge (with 865 and 875 core logic), which is indeed AC'97 based.

If you're not able to uninstall drivers from Add/Remove Programs, don't worry about that step. The next step is basically the same as uninstalling every single device from the Device Manager in one step.

The automatic driver re-installation was the unfortunate result of your inability to uninstall the majority of your drivers from the control panel. If these drivers are indeed missing, then you may well have a corrupt registry and need to reinstall Windows to get things running smoothly again.

Just to be clear on something though: Uninstalling a driver from the Device Manager and Uninstalling a driver from Add/Remove Programs are two completely different things. Doing so from the Device Manager will simply remove the driver from the device tree, but it will not physically remove the driver files or the INF entries (what enables Windows to identify a driver). This means that when you reboot, Windows will detect the device again then look for and find the driver files. Drivers that have executable installers will install a load of driver, INF and support files along with an uninstaller before invoking the standard Device Manager installation method. To completely remove the driver, not just from the Device Manager, you have to use the uninstaller that the installer installed...if you follow that

Triple check that the drivers are not in Add/Remove Programs. Drivers might have slightly obscure names, so look carefully. For example, your Radeon graphics card uses drivers called ATI Catalyst. If you can't find them, they're probably missing due to registry corruption.

Windows ships with a number of drivers of course (otherwise it wouldn't even be possible to install or boot the OS), which including things such as standard IDE controller drivers, basic sound and video card drivers, and whatever WHQL certified drivers where on hand when the retail OS build was finalised. Since the Radeon 8500-series pre-dates Windows XP, there will be the last WHQL certified driver included. Support software, such as the ATI Catalyst Control Panel or Control Center, is never included. You'll probably find however, that the Microsoft supplied Radeon 8500 driver is not fully accelerated. You should install ATI Catalyst.

Returning to the issue at hand however, I believe that your best option at this stage would be to reinstall Windows.

Post-note to anyone deciding to perform a Windows Repair operation.

Generally speaking, Windows Repair will fix most issues with Windows, but should be used with some discression. Repair will reinstall all original versions of the Windows system files and re-register them with the system registry. Windows Repair will not remove any files or modify any regions of the registry which do not relate specifically to the core OS. This is essentially a Windows re-installation, but with the dual effect of retaining installed programs and user files.

There are multiple side effects however.

• Software that is malfunctioning will simply replicate the issue. If the malfunction is resulting in the damage of Windows core components, you're back to square one.
• System files that have been updated by 3rd party software will not be repaired, and can be replaced with older versions. Windows NT5 and later (2000, XP, 2003) uses a system called COM/OLE, which enabled the co-existence of multiple versions of a system files (as opposed to Windows 4.x (95, 98, ME), which only permitted one version of any system file) and enforces the maintenance of obsolete interfaces. However, an old system file may end up accidentally unregistering the newer version. This usually causes program unpredictability.
• Windows repair will reinstall WHQL drivers, but it will not remove them first. This means, if an attached software component has malfunctioned or the registry has become corrupted, the drivers will not return to their original state.
• Windows repair cannot deal with a corrupt registry, excessively large registry hive file or a corrupt file system. For some stupid reason, although it is well within the reinstall program's power, it does not perform any consistency checks and can simply make matters worse.

Windows Repair has been successful in this circumstance (so far), but I would not normally recommend this coarse of action in this circumstance, due to Windows Repair's relatively poor success fixing driver related problems. Following a Windows Repair, always reinstall the latest Service Pack and perform a chkdsk c: /f.