Sometime towards the end of July, I installed Windows XP latest sound stuff (Windows Media, DirectSound, etc), version 10 I think. I had been putting it off for a while. I had heard about licensing issues, codec problems, and such. In a moment of weakness, I clicked the Windows Update button and installed it. What a pain.
WinAmp plays fine most of the time. At some point in time, when it isnt' playing, and I
'do something', I have no idea yet, and when I go back to playing WinAmp, I'll get a message
like:
Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in
configuration.
Error code: 88780078
Most of the time, I reboot my computer, and things magically fix themselves.
Upon further searching for solutions, someone pointed out a possible simple fix for my
problmem of the DirectSound 88780078 problem:
- Right click on My Computer
- Manage
- Device Manager
- go down to where the exclamation point is
- Right click to Disable, then Enable it.
In this case, it solved my problem. Now I'd like to know how it breaks randomly in the
first place. Some have said it has to do with VMWare. I do have VMWare workstation
installed, but hasn't been running for a while.
Any suggestions?
I did come across
Microsoft Knowledge Base article 29030. You can run a Windows Installer
Cleanup Utility. It's first screen shows, ironically, "Welcome to the Windows Installer
Clean Up Installation Wizard". When running the application after the installation, I don't
see anything having to do with sound, so just cancelled out.
There are more interesting solutions at
TechSpot.