BIg Problem - loss of sound, unable to reload drivers after reboot. Now what? HELP PLEASE!!!

Question

HI,
Have been working on getting this resolved for the past 6-7 hours reading and trying different things to no avail.  I have a Toshiba m305 s4829 from Best Buy thats only a few months old.  It apparently has a conextant audio driver ('smart audio 221' according to devices), which isn't showing up (there is a red "x" over the speaker). When I scroll the mouse over that icon it says "No Audio Output Device Is Enabled".  And when I go check out the Device Manager there is a hazard symbol under "SOUND, VIDEO & GAME CONTROLLERS". 
Don't know if this is a registry issue, a BIOS issue, a Vista 64 issue, a problem with me downloading the wrong driver, or somehow screwing up the process of unpacking and installing it.  Or if there is even some possible conflict that occured elsewhere.  
for more info on any of those ideas:
-registry / bios - I don't want to mess with these unless I absolutely have to.  I do have CC cleaner, superantispyware, and Avira antivirus installed and no viruses or spyware currently.
-wrong driver possibility - the first driver I tried was from the Toshiba "downloads" section for my model- its the second one down just issued on 12-02-08 ( http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/modelContent.jsp?ct=DL&os=&category=&moid=2060017&rpn=PSMDYU&modelFilter=M305D-S4829&selCategory=3&selFamily=1073768663&selModel=2060017|PSMDYU)
So that didn't work and I kept reading around and saw this (see http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=37703&tstart=0); whichpointed me towards trying this driver (http://www.mediafire.com/?mymmj2bkjfc) which didn't work either. 
-in terms of how I installed it, I tried different ways.  Read that if you simply uninstalled the driver and rebooted then it should automatically reinstall.  Not for me.  So I tried unistalling the old driver, rebooting, unpacking & installing the new driver & rebooting again.  Nothing.    I also tried installing it directly over the old driver that shows up, nothing.  
-potential conflict?? I do have a lot of music programs on here both recording (cubase, audacity) archiving/ playing (Media Monkey, Itunes), and composing (sibellius 5).  It was originally in audacity that I found out I couldn't play my freshly recorded song back. 
Getting frustrated, especially on a new system like this!!! Please help, would like to get this solved without having to reformat as I have put a lot of time/ energy into getting all the programs on there and working properly (which they did up until now).  I'm not sure about the recovery disks that came with and whether they would help, my understanding is that the latest drivers **SHOULD** be on toshibas website so recovery disks wouldn't be needed.  
***A few other tidbits that may help you help me:
- in addition to no audio driver showing up in device manager, there is also a hazard sign showing that my imaging device driver for the computers camera has dissapeared;(Chicony USB 2.0 camera).  What was I doing on this computer when it happened?  Well, nothing - restarting it.   An hour previous to that I was able to record a short rehearsal (hourish) on audicity (though audacity crashed and I had to uthe audacity reovery tool to get it back).   I've never really used the camera, but ealier in the day my wife used it to try and take a picture for her facebook profile (which I don't think she was successful at).  
Thanks for any ideas / advice!!
Message Edited by dano on 01-05-2009 06:42 AM
Message Edited by dano on 01-05-2009 06:46 AM

Answer 1

1.  We have had on several occurrences a situation where we (people in the office using the 941 phones) can hear the caller (or person we call outgoing), but they are unable to hear any sound from us.  Rebooting the SPA400 has seemed to solve the problem.  The problem has happened at least 5 times today, each time requiring a reset of the SPA400 before the external side of the party is able to hear us.
---try setting VAD to ON , set preffered coder to g711u on the spa400, don't forget the magic power cycle after saving settings.