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I had to reformat my laptop, used service pack 2 (windows XP), it was probably a bad move as I don't really have much knowledge in this area...... anyway the upshot of it is no sound on the laptop, everthing else is fine. Does anybody know how I can restore the sound? any help much appreciated! 

When you find out how it was done. let me know ;D

But look at the bottom left is there a speaker icon with a no entry sign on it. If so click it, then click the little sign on the volume control.

Sounds like the soundcard driver hasn't been installed. To check this right click 'my computer' select properties, click on the Hardware tab, then click the button that reads Device Manager.
Look for any yellow exclamation marks or red X's there should be one in the "Sound, Video and Game Controllers" entry if the driver hasn't been installed.
If this is the case then I will need to know the make & model of the laptop to try & identify which driver you need.

Couldn't find any exclamation marks or ticks, in My Computer "audio devices" says "device not installed" I'm presuming that's because, as you say, there's no driver. Sound was perfect before re-format.

Laptop is made by Novatech,  model no is: L51A10.

Hope you can help......

Thanks.

Novstech usually include a cd containing the drivers with their laptops you can install the sound driver with that.
If you don't have such a cd then download this file it is 13.5mb self extracting archive & contains the sound driver specific to your laptop.
http://login.dk-picard.dk/notebookservice/download/Uniwill/L51AI0/driver/Audio.exe

Once downloaded click on the file to extract the content. You will now have a folder named 'Audio' go into that folder & run 'setup' this will install the driver. Once the drivers installed restart the computer & the sound should work.

Aha!
it's fixed, many thanks.  ;D