Most computers these days have an integrated sound card on the motherboard. I think this is sufficient for the average joe. Well, if your motherboard has an integrated sound card, the motherboard should have came with a cd. In the cd should be the drivers.
if you have an integrated sound card on your motherboard, it's possible that it's been disabled via the bios
all of this advice is moot. If the Device Manager is absent under the System applet, then it has been disabled using security policies and there is nothing you can do to enable it. If the policies dont even allow you access to the device manager, you couldnt install drivers anyway (even if you could figure out which card is installed) just wait for the IT guys...they have obviously setup the machine so that you cant do any meaningful tinkering.
Probably true in most companies but not mine (a large insurance/investment/loan company that advertises heavily on Rocket games). All the other computers have them and my last one that crashed, causing me to have to get the new one that I'm having problems with, had one. I don't know, maybe our company orders them by the ton from Dell and they send them to us with the soundcards disabled as part of the deal? Then the techies enable them (we use them all the time for video presentations) and since this one is brand new they forgot to enable it. That's what I'm hoping...
then the other possibility is that the onboard soundcard is disabled in the BIOS, and as such wouldnt be available for install in the OS. but as I said...if you are unable to access the Device Manager(rightclick on My Computer, choose Properties)...that can only mean it has been disabled thru the user policies(domain security/user policies that are applied upon login)
