sound card says in use ,won't play any sounds

[MrT]

A friend of mine's pc is doing some od things with the sound card. upon start up it says that the sound card is in use and will not function properly. So basically no windows sounds will play. But, if you put a music cd in the cd player pops up and it starts playing music. what's up with that???
Haven't had the chance to get over there and look at the system yet, thought I would get some idea's as what to look for before I go.
Thanks.

[Deafdog 3000]

I had the same problem. Will the card play MIDI files? Mine did. The reason the CD plays is taht the drive is connected directly to the card, and plays the music recorded of it to the speakers. The card doesn't need to make any music of it's own. The reason this happened to me was I installed a Graphics card, which caused the problems. I removed the card, and everything worked fine. If he has added anything to his machine recently, software or hardware, remove it and see if that helps. If it's a card, try it in another slot if its software then get another copy. Tell me how it goes.