Vista - no sound on my vista PC, help!

I'm having a major problem with my sound...

No sound: it's just not working, and whenever I try to change the volume from the taskbar, a window pops up saying "Volume Control Applet is not responding". Also when I right-click on the sound icon and go to 'playback devices' and then go to the recording tab, it freezes (the window) and says "Windows Shell Common dll is not responding. (I don't know if this is related but my iTunes isn't working, I double-click to listen but the little time bar at the top doesn't move at all, but the window does not freeze)

Please help, I'll post pics if needed

P.S. - System Restore is not an option, I disabled it after I got a virus that supposedly comes from using it...

Specs:
Vista Home Premium 32bit (pre-installed in PC), 2942MB RAM
Sound - Realtek High-Definition Audio
Video - NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 (might have something to do with it I recently updated the video driver from the site, then I experienced this problem so I checked windows update, then I installed ANOTHER updowndate from there)

I also forgot to mention that whenever I shutdown/restart, a message pops up saying I have to close explorer.exe before shutdown because it's playing "turning off" sound (kinda funny, but not good).

anybody? It actually got worse, now there's a red X on my sound icon in the taskbar. Says " No Audio Output Device is Installed".

Go into your device manager and uninstall the sound card. Reboot the system and let windows re-install the driver.

See if that helps, has worked wonders in my years of fixing machines in many instances.

I have never had any problems with the drivers for www.3Dguru.com check there

Nothing, uninstalling then reinstalling didn't work. This is starting to annoy me because I'm a heavy music listener and the best speakers are on my PC. I forgot to mention that when I try to change the volume using the little icon, the little "applet" freezes. Well anymore help is appreciated.

if you are that into music i would get a good sound card. one with a fiber optic output. That would come with really good drivers and your music would sound better to boot.

I'd rather stick with this sound card (I'm cheap). It's just that the sound was working fine up until now (2-3 years) then now it just stopped. I just really want this to be fixed. If there's anyway to fix this then please help, if not THEN I'll resort to buying a new sound card or I'll just send my computer to someone to fix it.

try reinstalling i tunes

fiber optic output (SPDIF) is only usefull if you have a digital receiver or a speakerset that supports it (for instance Logitech's Z-5500 set). Moreover if you are using the SPDIF out basically your audiocard won't actually be doing any music processing.. it will just take the AC3/DTS stream from the music/video file you are playing and directly send that out the SPDIF jack. All the processing is done by your receiver.