I recently installed Windows XP Pro (fresh installation). For about thre days my computer ran without any problems but I started receiving an error message like
"Generic Host for Win32 has encountered an error and needs to close... Send... Dont Send"

Just after the error appears, when I try to play something in winamp I get the error
"Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration. Error code: 88780078".
But the weird thing is that the "ding" sound of the message still plays. I went to winamp's preferences and selected "waveout" in output plugins and tried to play a song. And I got the message :
"No sound devices found. Please buy a soundcard or install proper drivers...Windows error message: A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system."
Later I discovered that this was not just related to winamp, I got error 0x88780078 when i pressed play in other media players and the TestDirectSound Button in dxdiag dialog.

I went to Control Panel and opened the "Sound and Audio Devices Properties" dialog. It showed No Audio Device and lots of dimmed controls.
Whats more, dxdiag reports my board as D945GCR_ whereas in previous installation of XP it showed D945GCPE.

And finally, I restart my computer and the logoff sound plays and after a while everything works fine until the ugly "Generic Host..." mesage shows. And so on and on.

Could this be a problem with the Windows XP installation (because the same XP cd circulates around here and many other people have the same problem) or could this be a virus or something (because everyone who has this problem is connected to the same LAN).

Please give me some suggestions.

Arthas