Success! I love you people! Spent the past hour or two checking out your recommendations and printing out each step/window so I'd know where I'd been! DayLily, Frankly I don't know if I have a sound card or on-board sound. I can't find any reference to answer those questions (that I can interpret anyway) from running Belarc Advisor. I'd rather buy another computer than open up mine! Moths and dust would undoubtedly fly out! :) I appreciate your input. Thank you. Luis, My speakers are connected directly to my monitor. Since I didn't want to unplug a bunch of things and lug either my monitor and speakers into the other room or disconnect my husband's computer and bring it in here, I decided to check out the Control Panel's Sounds and Audio Devices. The first tab (Volume) had 'Mute' checked! Couldn't believe it. I thought I'd gone into every nook and cranny by now! I unchecked 'Mute' and really did look everywhere in that window this time. Also, under Advanced Audio Properties > Speakers, I changed the Speaker Setup from 'Monitor stereo speakers' to 'Desktop stereo speakers.' (Wouldn't have done that except the latter had pictures that shows my setup. Ha.) One or more of those actions must have done the trick. 'Thanks' is not adequate enough! But I do thank you so much Owbist, I went everywhere you suggested. I had been in some of those 'places' before, but I guess just not where to fix the problem. I'd seen those yellow exclamation marks, (...System Properties > Device Manager > Sound...), but when I'd click on one of the yellow jobbers > Unknown device Properties > DRIVER TAB > Driver Details or Update Driver, I'd get some kind of error message when I'd try to update a driver. It wasn't until I went to the GENERAL TAB and then REINSTALL DRIVER that worked to banish the yellows! Wow! Thanks! Raven, If you've read this novel this far, you were probably right about the sound being muted and I just hadn't seen that particular window before, although I'd seen the volume window somewhere in my earlier travels and no mute boxes were checked and I'd raised the volume sliders up higher. Several times prior, I'd moved the couch, gotten out my flashlight and trusty magnifying glass and unplugged, re-plugged, and deciphered the almost invisible icons on my monitor, speakers, and computer backside. :) Thank you. Well, folks, before I posted this, I listened to 3 songs and did a Hallelujah! I'm thrilled. And it's all because of you. I'm going to bed now. Hope I never have to travel in this particular labyrinth again! Good night. Kat

found this info on other forums about a Dell latitude I will list all of the various ways that I saw; you can go to Control Panel > Mouse and select the Dell Touchpad tab. There should be a Device Select icon which will give you the option to turn off the touchpad and/or touchpad buttons. Alternatively, for those who want to turn off the pointing stick and/or pointing stick buttons, there are also options to disable or enable those. *Start-->Settings--Control Panel double-click mouse and there's an option there to disable the touchpad *"For all of you having trouble enabling or disabling the touchpad: Turn on or off the Fast Initialization button under hardware properties for the Touchpad. Fast Initialization = On, then reboot, you are now able to turn the touchpad On or Off from Mouse Properties Hope this helps, it was a PITA to figure out." *Just go to control pannel and double click on 'mouse'. There should then be a tab called 'Touch pad' and click on that. There should then be an option 'Tap off when typing' enable that and your problem should be solved. It also said that if you do not find those options there then it is possible your touchpad drivers are not installed which would allow you to make the changes. "If the control panel only shows things about a "mouse", the touchpad drivers are not installed. You could try www.synaptics.com for drivers." found this on the dell site *Customizing the Touch Pad and Track Stick You can use the Mouse Properties window to disable the touch pad and track stick or adjust their settings. Open the Control Panel, and then click Mouse. For information about the Control Panel, see Windows Help and Support Center. In the Mouse Properties window: * Click the Device Select tab to disable the touch pad and track stick. * Click the Touch Pad tab to adjust touch pad and track stick settings. Click OK to save the settings and close the window. I hope out of those maybe something will work

It may be IE7 as it had been causing a lot of problems with some people with WinXP. To get rid of IE7, go to Control Panel>Add/Remove>find IE7 and remove. It will revert your laptop back to a newer version of IE6. But, you will have to your laptop off of Windows Automatic Updates, otherwise, the next time it goes for updates it will download and install IE7 again. You will have to do your updates manually. I like that option better as you can see what you are downloading and whether you need it or not.

Grandms, (expanding what Mikie said...) Try shutting down the computer. Unplug your keyboard and mouse, and then plug in the wireless pick-up(s) for the new keyboard and mouse. Turn on your new equipment and turn on the computer. All should be well. You don't ordinarily need to use the installation CD. It usually just has a bunch of junk on it anyway. Hope this helps.. txKen