WOW! All of these no SOUND Issues! :-(

After a Hotfix last week I lost my sound. Using a Dell
Dimension with the Creative 5.1 and XP Pro. I tried
reinstalling the drivers reseating the sound card and
installing it into another slot. No joy! Contacted DELL
and we jumped through hoops and they sent me a new sound
card! Still no sound! So I do a little research on the
net with GOOGLE and now here and it seems there are a
large number of people with no sound and countless others
who are not resourceful enough to make it here! DELL
says reload the OS. I say bite me! So the question what
did MS do with their HOTFI that hosed my sound and how
can I fix it! I've tried and retried everything I can
think of and I hardly ever need any PC related help!
What gives here? MS needs to step up to the plate here
and admit there is a problem!