For reference, my OS is XP Professional Media Edition SP2. All the forms of
media on my computer have been rendered non-functional. While all the files
are still resident on my hard drive, non of the programs, such as Sonic
CD/DVD burning, Quicktime, RealPlayer, or XP Media Center, will function at
all. Another interesting tidbit is that when checking in the Add/Remove
Program feature, all the same media programs are listed there, but the normal
listing of how large in megabytes the programs are is not listed. I have run
Norton Antivirus (with updated signature file), Ewido trojan defense, and a
plethora of anti-malware programs and turned up no viruses, etc., on the
system. What has happened to my system, and, short of reinstalling the OS
and/or performing a disk format and clean install, how can I get my media
back? I'm at a loss. Any information would be helpful. Thanks.

This is a follow-up reply providing information to those who read this
thread. After contacting Dell and going through two and a half days of paid
technical support, the final conclusion by Dell and myself (which agrees with
what I read independently on other tech support web sites regarding similar
device/IRQ conflict problems with Windows XP) is that a fix is impossible and
a full format and reinstallation of the operating system is required. I now
have to utilize one of the web-based businesses that allow a subscriber to
upload data to their server, which can be retrieved later by the same
subscriber. That's the only way to save my data that hasn't been backed up
since my last full backup of my system three weeks ago. I pity those who
don't backup their files regularly. I hope this thread can help other
Windows XP users.

"FYIGMO" wrote: