Question : Problem: missing video sounds

I dont hear any sounds playing any video clips.  My sounds disappeared after deleting softdvd.  I removed all the shared dll's by mistake.  Now all the sounds for any players are gone.

Listining to mp3's..songs..music cd's all have sounds..  just not the sounds on video clips..

I tried using sfc, re-installing win98 exc...
I tried about everything.  I cant get back those dll's I deleted.  

Please tell me how to get my sounds working.

Answer : Problem: missing video sounds

Okay, so here's the problem:

When you uninstalled XingDVD Player you left behind the DirectShow filters XmdAudioDecode.dll and XmdVidSubDecode.dll. So all your DirectShow players will still use XmdVidSubDecode for all MPEG video and XmdAudioDecode for all MPEG audio. But you got rid of AsmFloatFull.dll, which AmdAudioDecode is dependent on, so DirectShow uses it, but it can't actually play the audio.

So what you need to do is unregister XmdAudioDecode.dll. So you first go to
Start | Run
and do
regsvr32 -u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Xing Shared\MPEG Decode\XmdAudioDecode.dll"

(Make sure the path you use is the right path to the file on your machine.) It should say "DllUnregisterServer in C:\...\XmdAudioDecode.dll succeeded". Then you can delete the file, although you don't have to - but it will be useless.

You said at some point "... I'm not supposed to delete all shared DLLs" but that's not really true - a lot of people think that. These 2 DLLs for instance are shared because some other Xing apps use them. But the uninstalls know when there no longer needed (shared files are reference counted and uninstalled when the reference count is decremented to 0) and uninstalls them if that's the case. Sometimes things can get messed up, but usually if an uninstall wants to delete a shared file, it is not needed any more. And it's never a system file or anything, unless the person writing the install messed up.