Vista - lost the sound from realtek alc888, nothing but chaos has followed

i recently (yesterday) lost my sound from a realtek alc888 device driver. it all started very simple, in my status bar, pop ups continued to, uhhh.... well, pop up, stating that i just unplugged a device from the driver, then it would tell me i plugged it back in, all the time doing nothing remotely close to these insane accusations, i continued without really worrying about it. until i actually lost my sound, and it went crazy with those pop ups. so i uninstalled the driver, reboot, installed new driver from realtek, and it worked for like 4 hours, then no sound again. uninstalled driver, reboot, install, reboot, no sound, and i am apparently continuously unplugging the jack like a madman. so, another uninstall, reboot, but this time i install the driver from the cd i got with my pc (dell inspiron 530s-120b), now this actually got me somewhere, well sort of, now it tells me that everything is wonderful when it comes to my sound, drivers are installed, speakers are "working", but there is still no actual sounds blasting me in the face as what would be happening with these things cranked to the max. oh yeah, i even tried plugging them into the front jack, but strangely the system simply does not recognize this, and continues to let me know that i have unplugged them, but i do hear that split second of speaker static when i plug them in, so at least the speakers know whats going on. i also tried restoring, but it seems you cant do that if you never actually made a restore point, im new to vista, so had i known i would have no restore options, i would of made one, but i guess that wouldnt be this much fun. anyone with any help for me would be greatly appreciated, i have spent about 7 hours googleing and downloading, and trying all sorts of new and exciting ways of accomplishing absolutely nothing. thank you kindly for your time, and please help soon.

Hi frigs,

Sorry to hear you have no sound at all!

My problem is very low sound, even when all settings are at maximum volume. It's just way too low for watching movies or listening to music. So far I've updated to the latest driver from Realtek, but it made no differnce

Just out of interest how was your sound before this happened, was it loud enough or very low. I'm tearing my hair out trying to find a fix for this!

Go to the sound control program
and look for the sound accelerator. Make adjustments with it and see if it helps.

the sound was absolutely fine, it just started to get what seemed to be connection issues with the pop ups i was getting, i've gone into all the sound options i can find, it shows that everything is working fine, even shows fluctuating sounds bars when when things are outputting sound, testing the sound works flawlessly, well except for the fact that there is no actual sound. i was unable to find any sound accelerator program, and i still occasionally get the pop ups still. this is truely madness, i think it might be that realtek blows, i have found similar issues with them that have been going on for over a year now, and they seem to be offering no help, and saying it is not there problem.

so this is what i did, i reformatted my pc, only to eventually install kaspersky, scan my pc, and find that i was scanning files i had before i reformatted, so, i found out how to actually reformat vista, wtf???? i did that, re-installed all the drivers, actually got rid of every pre-existing file on my pc, back to factory, and still no sound. so i am completely p##### off, to put it nicely. the only thing i can think of is to buy a different sound card, and send this realtek p.o.s. to realtek attached with a highly explosive device that detonates upon opening. i had to find something to do in the 8 hours it took me to do all this, so i decided to play beer pong with myself, so let me tell you how i feel about realtek right now. everything still says it works fine, all the sound is up in all the options i have available, but i hear f'ing nothing, so it may be time to actually smash something untill i feel better. any help, again, is greatly appreciated.