Dublex

Well, after repairing XP Home yesterday after part of the OS decided to throw a fit (unpleasant to say the least) I was wondering if anyone knew why I am now facing a bizarre sound problem. I have an AC-97 Realtek audio onboard sound card which seems to work in directX and Winamp (the audio plays back in games as well as winamp) but for some reason it cannot play any windows system sounds (Faults etc, new icons), shows the playback button as grey on the audio devices sound menu and the volume icon appear in the system tray, even if its forced to appear.

It isn't really a problem as the crucial sound works (DirectX games and Winamp) but if anyone could offer an idea as to why the volume icon does not show up, or why it should mostly work or as to a way of forcing the icon back and the device to be detected (it shows up normally as a hardware device and is not corrupted, the driver seems to be OK etc) maybe by kicking XP somewhere into re-installing the sound applet I would be greatful