No Sound Problem

For some strange reason I simply cannot get any sound
either from my on-board sound chip or dedicated sound
card. The error message I got when I checked the driver
properties is: "Driver is enabled but has not been
started".
It does not matter if I use the latest audio driver from
Creative Labs for my ES1371 sound card (on-board PCI
peripheral chip disabled in this case, of course)or the
VIA audio driver for the Southbridge chip on the
motherboard, all items listed under the Audio, Volume,
and Voice tabs of the "Sounds and Audio Devices
Properties" are grayed out. I'm using a K7VTA3 V.8
motherboard with an AMD 2200+ Athlon CPU.
How can I start my audio driver in this case? Please help.