So here is what happened. I used to always get great sound on my laptop. That all changed after I bought the sims 3. the game ran for about 10 minutes and then it would just quit. I found out that my laptop didn't have the qualities to run the game so I uninstalled the game. Well after I did that, the sound quit working. And yes, I checked to see if my volume is up and it is. The funny thing is, is that it will play sound on my I-tunes but not when I go on the internet such as YouTube. Does anyone know what the problem could be?

If happened recently, I would suggest using system restore back to the time before you installed SIMS

Steps are the same for Vista

System Restore
-Go down till you see
How to use System Restore to restore Windows XP to a previous state
How to restore Windows XP to a previous state (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084)

Before I did a restore I would just try to update my flash from adobe.com and my java at java.com

Also you can reset IExplorer by itself in the tools menu and see if that restores your sound... I would try these 10 second fixes before I tried a system restore which sometimes does more harm than good.

Hope this helps you. :)