No Sound After XP Upgrade(I've Tried 3 Different Sound Cards)

I've just upgraded to XP from '98. My sound card now does not work (won’t play or capture). I have tried 3 different sound cards with the same results. They were the Hercules Muse 5.1, the Creative 16 PCI SoundBlaster, and the Creative PC 128. I presently have the Hercules in my PC. I've removed (clean swept) all of the old sound card drivers and reloaded all of the Windows XP, the sound card, Direct X and my mother board's latest upgrades, patches and drivers. I've changed card slots and when I did the PC recognized the change on start up. Windows Device Manager shows the card installed with no conflicts. When I check the properties for the audio card in Device Manager it says, "the driver is enabled but has not been started". Where it says "use audio features on this device" I have made sure that the audio device toggle is switched "on". In the Windows Control Panel/Sounds & Audio Devices, the Volume tab shows "no audio device", the audio tab shows "no playback device, no recording device, no MIDI playback device". The screens are grayed out. When I open the volume controls in Windows an error message pops up stating, "there are no active mixer devices available". Do you have any ideas on how to solve this problem?